I have attached to this message version 2 of user-load-dir.el. This version incorporates the recursive load-dir function written by Evans Winner (see <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2011-03/msg00239.html>). It also adds two new defcustom variables, load-files-in-user-load-dir-recursively and auto-load-files-in-user-load-dir.
Note that one major new feature introduced by this version is that if the .el file has been byte compiled, the byte compiled version will be loaded instead of the source version. This is a major improvement over my original version which would only load .el files.
There are two remaining issues with this version. If one of the files in the user-load-dir has been byte-compiled, it will be loaded twice. Also it has no error handling.
I am more than willing to continue development of this file into an Emacs package that can be included in ELPA. This would make it possible for this useful feature to be made readily available to those who want to use it without including it in Emacs itself.
I have one question. What sort of error handling should I incorporate into this package?
user-load-dir.el