> AG> You can't do that, it breaks things when you need to set variables
> AG> before the packages get initialized.
>
> Can you be more specific about when that may happen?  What variables
> need to be set before calling `package-initialize'?  Perhaps these cases
> can be handled in clever ways if they only affect a minority?  I don't
> know, so please explain gently :)

You may also be interested in a spin-off thread, "Calling package-initialize sooner during initialization", where one such clever way is currently being discussed.