>>> fresh Emacs instance. There's no reason the "package manager" could not
>>> spawn a separate Emacs in batch-mode as a sub-job to do the compilation.
>> Very lightly tested version:
> This uses the Emacs executable on the exec path, which might not be the
> correct one.
> I'm wary of making such a fundamental change to package.el without first
> exploring possible package-specific work-arounds.
Yes, this should not a candidate for 24.1.
> Could problematic packages use an eval-when-compile form to forcibly
> load the correct version of the required file?
I think it's a sufficiently general problem that we might want to
provide some special support for a good solution (tho again, I doubt
there's something simple&safe enough to be a candidate for 24.1).
E.g. we could add to bytecomp.el the ability to force `require' to
reload a package if it's not already loaded from the file that
locate-library returns.
Stefan
