Re: user-controlled load-path extension: load-dir

[Stefan Monnier]

>    1. Each of the defcustom items now has a require property.
>    The main benefit of this is that a user may now simply place
>    load-dir.el in their load path, use M-x load-library to load
>    'load-dir' and then do a M-x customize-group to customize the
>    'load-dir' group, customize load-dirs, and restart Emacs.  There is
>    no need to also manually edit their .emacs file to add a '(require
>    'load-dir)' in order to actually cause Emacs to load load-dir.el.

If it's meant as an ELPA package, this is unneeded, since just
installing the package can cause installation of some autoloads.
This is important because the use of :require in defcustoms is generally
discouraged (it places the feature name (i.e. the file name) into the
user's custom-file, so if the feature gets moved to another file or of
the file gets renamed, previous cutomizations tend to signals errors
about not finding the old file name).


        Stefan