Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>> We can just `setq` a private global var.  It's conceptually
>>> ugly, but it gets the job done.  As long as we support only a single
>>> global `package-quickstart.el` that should be good enough.
>> I guess you prefer this to the approach in the patch I sent, where I
>> let-bind default-directory outside the load of package-quickstart-file?
>
> Your approach is cleaner but I'm just worried that someone out there
> loads the package-quickstart file "by hand".

Ah, good point.  I'll just do the setq, see patch: