Here are my two cents as a somewhat average emacs user (then I'll butt out
and let you all decide what you want to do).

I have around 30 packages that I install through ELPA. Since this is pretty
unwieldy, I have these all configured using the "use-package" macro, which
will automatically download missing packages and `require' them as
necessary. This makes installations on new machines really simple.

However, since AUCTeX doesn't have any (require 'auctex) line, use-package
will fail and AUCTeX won't install. That means that out of the 30 packages
I have, I am required to install AUCTeX manually. Now that I know that
AUCTeX will work when you just install it, it is indeed not too hard to get
AUCTeX working. However, my main hangup in this whole issue is that I
expected AUCTeX to work like all the other packages I use.

So it's not that AUCTeX is hard to install per se, it's just that it's
different than all the other 30 packages that I use. This, in my
experience, has always made AUCTeX confusing to me in the past.

Whatever you decided to do, thanks for all your work on this.

Caleb


On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 5:34 AM, Mosè Giordano <mose@gnu.org> wrote:

> Hi Stefan,
>
> 2016-07-27 5:14 GMT+02:00 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>:
> > The intent is not to make the installation easier.
> > It's to make it compatible with the old (require 'tex-site) method.
> > But as mentioned, maybe rather than make (require 'tex-site) work, it
> > might be preferable to emit a warning explaining that it's better to
> > just do nothing and let package-initialize do its job.
>
> Ok, I see.  Then I'd personally prefer to go by this route (do not use
> `require' at all), but Tassilo is the main maintainer of AUCTeX on
> ELPA.  Tassilo, what's your opinion on this?
>
> Bye,
> Mosè
>