Re: Proposals for fixing package-initialize

[Radon Rosborough]

> It's hyperbole to say nobody has any idea, however -- there are
> several general text-oriented serialization formats that people have
> already defined (e.g., YAML, JSON, sexps). Any of these can be
> easily adapted to the package-metadata domain.

Oh, I certainly agree. The difficulty I see is that many people want
to do their package (and package manager) configuration dynamically.
For example, set package-load-list so that only packages are loaded
which aren't in some folder used for active development. Or only
interface with the package manager at arbitrary times to effect
deferred installation.

So a purely declarative format will never work, because of all the
interesting use cases it would exclude; it has to be an imperative
format that nevertheless allows Emacs some more control than the
present. Or a declarative format that allows for as much
customizability as an imperative one.