> Maybe simply the ability to spread the saved custom settings over

> several files is all that's needed (with a default arrangement that

> places all the package.el settings into ~/.emacs.d/early-init.el and

> everything else in ~/.emacs.d/init.el).

That sounds like an elegant solution (and it is also an argument for

having two separate files rather than a special `with-early-config'

form).

We would also want to consider whether people might want to place

config at any additional places in startup.el. We'd like to avoid

having more than two init-files, of course, so I think it's important

to try to capture as many use cases as possible with this new

init-file.

Probably, that means loading early-init.el as early as is humanly

possible, so that people can customize other points in the init by

adding things to hook variables.