Re: using use-package

[Stefan Monnier]

> One basic property of FP is that things should not be more order sensitive
> than the minimum (data-dependency) required

Agreed.

> By not having package-archive as an autoload, those two statements become
> more order dependent than they (seemingly) need be.

I don't see it that way: add-to-list is inherently different from setq
(from a data-dependency point of view), so you can't expect
(add-to-list 'foo bar) to work properly without first loading the
package that defines foo.
Relying on variables being autoloaded would just open another can of worms.

> And if core emacs functionality can be thus fragile is it realistic to expect
> random packages to satisfy all the new/changing/confusing best practices?

AFAIK those "best practices" aren't very new and changing.  They've been
used for bundled Emacs packages for many years and all GNU ELPA packages
have strived to do the same from the very beginning.

> IOW you folks should give a serious consideration to putting
> (something like) use-package (better req-package) in the core

The problem is to define "something like".


        Stefan