Re: Loading a package applies automatically to future sessions?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> I think there should be a way to activate a package explicitly for the
>> current session _without_ automatically activating it for future
>> sessions.
> The failure of package.el to support this use case

FWIW, package.el does support this case:
- one way is to prevent package-initialize from activating packages,
  and then activating the ones you want by explicit calls to package-active.
- another is to set package-load-list.  E.g.

    (setq package-load-list '((auctex nil) all))

This said, if a package's activation gets in the way of the user, I'd
generally consider it to be a bug in that package (similar to the fact
that if (require <foo>) has undesirable effects it's usually a bug in
<foo>).

E.g. packages providing some kind of global minor mode should never have
that minor mode enabled just by activating the package: instead the
activation should do nothing more than autoload the minor mode function.


        Stefan