after-init-hook vs eval-after-load/with-eval-after-load

Question

I've found the rather useful How Packages work in Emacs 24, however, I'd like a definitive answer from an experienced user or a core developer as to which of these is actually preferred in the typical case on 24.4.

Afaik, (add-hook 'after-init-hook ...) is the so-to-say brute-force approach to setting up customizations for packages. However, eval-after-load and its more syntactically sugary with-eval-after-load seem more appropriate for more dynamic and fine grained configuration that plays well with the gradual, separate and lazy loading of extensions.

Is my understand correct? What else should I keep in mind?

Answer 1

Afaik, (add-hook 'after-init-hook ...) is the so-to-say brute-force approach to setting up customizations for packages.

No. If you want to configure packages in your init file, the typical approach is to call (package-initialize) at the top of the file, and then do the configurations. after-init-hook is unnecessarily complicated for this purpose.

However, eval-after-load and its more syntactically sugary with-eval-after-load seem more appropriate for more dynamic and fine grained configuration that plays well with the gradual, separate and lazy loading of extensions.

(with-)eval-after-load is used for things you want to do after a package is loaded. package-initialize doesn't load the packages, it only “prepares” them (loads their autoloads).

If you use eval-after-load around every set of configurations, you won't need to call (package-initialize) at the top. But what people usually do is to call (package-initialize), so that most configurations can be written straight to the init file, and then only eval-after-load code which is very long or which depends on the package being loaded.