I haven't been monitoring the mailing list but I noticed a lot of new changes to package.el. One is that now the generated *-autoloads.el file doesn't contain (provides 'pkg-autoloads). Was this something that was intentional or something that got lost along the way.
I like having this because it allows me to use (eval-after-load 'pkg-autoloads ...) in my init.el and only conditionally evaluate code when a package is actually installed. I realize I can now use (when (package-installed-p 'pkg) ..) now but the nice thing about the `eval-after-load` is that it evaluates when I install the package from list-packages.
If it is an optimization for load time I am happy to work around it but if it was unintended I can file a bug and maybe we can get it back.