Re: Calling (package-initialize) sooner during initialization

[Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com>]

2015-04-27 10:52 GMT+01:00 Thierry Volpiatto <thierry.volpiatto@gmail.com>:
> Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:
>
>> But the current code in Emacs's "master" solves this problem by adding
>> "(package-initialize)" in the user's ~/.emacs.
>
> This is a very bad idea, I don't want my init file modified.
> Only the user should modify this file.

It's not a great idea, but the previous situation was unnacceptable,
so something was done about it. We can certainly improve on it.

> Why don't you write to the custom-file (and make the use of custom-file
> the default instead of writing custom settings in .emacs by default) ?

Because the custom-file might not be loaded at the top of the init
file. And package-initialize needs to be placed at the very top
(otherwise it's not solving anything).
Of course the user can then go ahead and move package-initialize
anywhere else that he wants (or even comment it out). But the first
time it is inserted needs to be at the very top, so that we solve the
problem for those users who don't know any better.