sperber(a)Informatik.Uni-Tuebingen.De (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]) writes: But when did it break, in 21.1.x? I presume the package code only breaks when you have installed your own packages? How old is 21.1.x really? If it were broken in all versions starting with 19.15, this argument would make sense. I know for a fact that users are using that feature. Personally I think a fix should be attempted first. Starting with eliminating the fact that user-init-file is a full path but user-init-directory isn't. Jan