Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>> Maybe package-quickstart.el could use relative names to packages in
>> package-user-dir (since it itself lives in package-user-dir), and
>> absolute names to packages outside that?
>
> Sounds OK.  Tho maybe we should check `file*-in-directory-p` (or the
> presence of "../" in the output of `file-relative-name`) rather than
> distinguishing based on `package-user-dir` vs `package-directory-list`?
>
> In any case, it sounds like a good compromise.

Makes sense.  How about this?