Re: Summary and next steps for (package-initialize)

[Clément Pit-Claudel]

On 2017-08-21 18:34, Radon Rosborough wrote:
>>>> I think we should instead explore the possibility that
>>>> package-initialize will be called only in startup.el.
>>>
>>> I think this is unlikely to work well.
>>
>> As I said, we should explore this in more detail, and have a detailed
>> and agreed-upon list of reasons why it's not TRT.
> 
> PROPOSITION: Calling `package-initialize' only in startup.el is
> impossible without one of the following consequences:
> 
>   1. It is impossible to customize `package-load-list' and
>      `package-user-dir'.
>   2. We must add a second init-file.
>   3. The user cannot add package customizations to their init-file
>      without using `after-init-hook'.
>   4. Packages are not activated automatically.
> 
> …
> Can someone find a hole in this reasoning?

I can't find an obvious flaw. But I wouldn't find it bad if customizing 
package-user-dir and package-load-list required an extra call to 
package-initialize — except for the fact that the first package-initialize call 
would have loaded everything already from the wrong user-dir, which is indeed 
an issue.