On Tue, May 15 2012, kj wrote:

> In <87aa19dqpc.fsf@note...> Jason Earl <jearl@note...> writes:
>
>>On Tue, May 15 2012, kj wrote:
>
>>> Is there a shorter distance between wish and reality here?
>
>>Emacs 24 will come complete with package.el.  This allows you to add
>>repositories of packages (it comes with elpa.gnu.org by default) and
>>install by simply selecting them from a list.
>
> Okay, as of now it looks like one cannot add any other repos; the
> doc says:
>
>     ;; This code supports a single package repository, ELPA.
>
> ELPA is still tiny, though it has a few interesting-looking items
> in it.  Thanks for the pointer, anyway.  Looking forward to Emacs
> 24!

That's interesting, a quick perusal of the package.el source that comes
with my copy of Emacs turns up this:

;; The downloader downloads all dependent packages.  By default,
;; packages come from the official GNU sources, but others may be
;; added by customizing the `package-archives' alist.  Packages get
;; byte-compiled at install time.

Which seems to jibe with what I remember from lurking on emacs-devel.
Interestingly enough one of the GNU ELPA packages is load-dir which
should also help make loading random packages easier.

Jason