Re: Calling (package-initialize) sooner during initialization

[Stefan Monnier]

> Option 2) Instead of us manually telling users to add
> `(package-initialize)' to their init-files, we have Emacs do that
> automatically. Similar to how `custom.el' adds a call to
> `custom-set-variables' the first time you save a variable; package.el
> could add a call to `package-initialize' the first time you install a
> package.

I think that's the way to go, indeed.

> This would be a one-time-thing (and would take some intelligent coding
> to prevent annoyiances).

I think "only add it if that string can't be found in ~/.emacs yet"
should do it reliably enough.

There's still one hard problem to solve, I think:

  How to make it so that Customizing package variable `foo-bar' works
  right (which requires loading foo-autoloads beforehand, usually done
  by package-initialize), while making it so that Customizing
  package-load-list and package-directory-list also works correctly
  (which requires delays package-initialize to after those
  custom-settings are applied)?


-- Stefan