Yes, but the problem we are grappling with here is that we have packages where in one scenario the right trade-off is to pay the extra load time caused by a lot of precompiled data to have the lower TTFX, and in another (equally legitimate) scenario that becomes a real problem because for example CategoricalArrays only loads SentinelArrays to make sure things are integrated, but in this scenario no one will ever use any functionality from SentinelArrays. So then one pays the extra load time from the precompile data load, but never gets anything back in terms of TTFX because the functionality that is being precompiled never actually runs.
So that sounds interesting! I guess in that case the idea would be that we could define four new packages (one for each of the @require integration points that CategoricalArrays currently has), put all the code that is currently in these @require blocks into these packages, and then only load these new integration packages in the @require clause? If that would solve the problem, it might be the least involved to get going?