Packages are always being re-installed on every start

[TLINDEN]

Packages are always being re-installed on every start

[TLINDEN]

I solved it myself.

I had a custom package-user-dir set before executing (package-initialize) (not shown in the config snippet above). So, package.el looked into the default directory for packages - which is empty - and installed every package.

Putting (package-initialize) after the customization fixed it, that is:

(require 'package)

;; needs to be set before init
(setq package-user-dir
      (expand-file-name (format "elpa-%s.%s" emacs-major-version emacs-minor-version)
                        tvd-config-dir))

(add-to-list 'package-archives '("gnu"   . "https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/"))
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))

(package-initialize)

So, this had noting to do with use-package, which works as expected.