Subject: bug#77468: 30.1.50; package-quickstart file is not relocatable

From: Spencer Baugh <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2025 15:54:16 -0400

Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]> writes:
>> I think we should make package-quickstart use file names which are
>> relative to the location of the package-quickstart file itself.
>
> It would probably slow down startup a little bit since
> `package-quickstart.el` (PQ) would need to `expand-file-name` every time
> it binds `load-file-name`, but yes I think it would be a good change.
>
> There is still the problem that the relative file names may themselves
> break when your `package-directory-list` has directories that are
> outside of the home directory.
>
> Actually, now that I think about it, the change you suggest would break
> one of my use cases (where my packages are always at the same place,
> outside of $HOME, but $HOME does move).

Oh, right.  I didn't think of the case where package-quickstart.el
refers to packages outside the directory it lives in.

I definitely don't think package-quickstart.el should use relative names
to those packages - that would be quite weird - and I do expect it would
break some use cases.

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?

That would also fix my issue and I'd be happy to implement it.