I'm circling back around to this; I think that that change makes a lot of
sense. It seems better to me -- if you're calling one of these package
functions, you probably want to work with the package system, which is only
properly set up when you call package-initialize.

What other functions would need to call package-initialize, if it hasn't
been called? I notice that package-install already does that. Some other
functions for installing don't
(package-install-from-archive, package-install-from-buffer), but I'm not
sure whether they need to.

On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 6:58 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:

> >> 1. Make `package-installed-p' and other functions automatically
> >>    initialize package.el if necessary.
>
> Yes, when I changed it recently I hesitated to do that and decided to
> refrain from doing so in order to minimize the changes, but it makes
> a lot of sense.
>
>
>         Stefan
>
>
> diff --git a/lisp/emacs-lisp/package.el b/lisp/emacs-lisp/package.el
> index 94d98178c4..56be5ef70c 100644
> --- a/lisp/emacs-lisp/package.el
> +++ b/lisp/emacs-lisp/package.el
> @@ -1889,8 +1889,8 @@ package-installed-p
>      ;; We used the quickstart: make it possible to use package-installed-p
>      ;; even before package is fully initialized.
>      (memq package package-activated-list))
> -   ((not package--initialized) (error "package.el is not yet
> initialized!"))
>     (t
> +    (unless package--initialized (package-initialize 'no-activate))
>      (or
>       (let ((pkg-descs (cdr (assq package package-alist))))
>         (and pkg-descs
>