Matt Armstrong <matt@rfc20.org> writes:

>>> 1) Harden Emacs such that signaled errors from
>>> "package-quickstart.elc" don't prevent startup (but are somehow
>>> saved and logged, maybe as warnings?).
>>
>> Agreed.  I suspect it should also do things like delete the `.elc`
>> file (and/or the `.el` file), or at least suggest doing it, so as to
>> help diagnose/circumvent the problem.
>
> Ok, let's keep it on the list of possibilities.

This (attached) approach seems to work in my manual testing.  If you
like the general idea I can polish it off (try to make a test, etc.).

One thing that bothers me: because I fall back to
`package--activate-all' even package that successfully activate in the
quickstart file can have their activation code run twice, and they
aren't necessarily idempotent operations.  Do you think this is a
significant problem?

One possibility is to update `package-activated-list' and
`Info-directory-list' incrementally in the quickstart file, so any
signaled errors leave `package-activated-list' mostly-correct.  This
way, `package--activate-all' will attempt to activate only one package
twice -- the one that signaled from the quickstart file.