Re: Customizable modes and package.el

[David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>]

On Mar 30, 2015, at 1:28 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> 
>>>> That's not an option, because the user may need/want to run some Elisp
>>>> code of his own choosing *before* package-initialize is called.
>>>> E.g. in my case, I need to set package-load-list and
>>>> package-directory-list before package-initialize runs.
>>> `package-initialize' could look into some file like
>>> ~/.emacs.d/package-init.el and load that before initializing.
>> Please, not Yet Another File That Changes Emacs' Behaviour
> 
> Exactly.  So, for these reasons, "the solution" is to add
> "(package-initialize)" in the ~/.emacs file.

See also Bug#21858.

Adding (package-initialize) to a user-controlled file is ugly if it has the consequence that it breaks startup of any older Emacs on the system.  
Also, note that the action is not undoable from the menus, even though installing a package can be done via the menu.

Simple kludge:

(if (fboundp ‘package-initialize) (package-initialize))

But, reasonably:

Treat .emacs as something only the user changes.  `custom-file’ is what can be changed by Emacs. (But that one is loaded too late,  in this case.)

If packages are present, can’t (package-initialize) be called unconditionally before .emacs is loaded?   In response to Stefan Monnier’s message from 3/30/2015, perhaps package-load-list and package-directory-list can be set elsewhere, or their functionality eliminated.   Or they could be set in .emacs with a new macro such as 

(eval-before-load 
	(setq package-load-list …))

or even

(set-package-load-list XXX)
(set-package-directory-list YYY)

Even the ~/.emacs.d/package-init.el file proposed by Artur seems more reasonable than what is done now, and it wouldn’t require an extra pass over the user’s .emacs.