Adding Package Repositories in Gnu Emacs 24.4

[Bourgoin, Mario]

How can the custom system be reliably used to add package repositories to Gnu 
Emacs 24.4 (and later)?  Since in 24.4, "package-archives" may be customized, 
that seems the way to go.

Apparently, that approach
... only works if the custom system controls package initialisation, which 
isn't the case in many of the popular configuration bundles.
Steve Purcell
                https://github.com/milkypostman/melpa/issues/2674
Steve wrote that people add the code:
(require 'package)
...
(add-to-list 'package-archives '(...))
(package-initialize)
...
to the Emacs initialization file so they can depend on "packages" being 
installed and initialized when later in the initialization file, they have
(require 'some-package)
(some-package-whatever-mode t)
My problem with this was that running "package-initialize" in my Emacs 
initialization file resulted in a recently-installed version of AUCTeX 
(11.88.4) being shadowed by an older built-in version of AUCTeX on load-path. 
(I was using Vincent Goulet's installer emacs-24.4-modified-1.exe from
http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/emacs/windows
and that problem may be due to AUCTeX initialization.)

So is there one best approach to use, or am I at the mercy of the Emacs 
configuration bundle?

Mario Bourgoin
Senior Data Scientist - Hopkinton
EMC CTD Symmetrix uCode
(508) 249-1297 Direct