This new keyword, if provided along with a non-nil value, causes the
action of :ensure to be deferred until "necessary". Package
installation can be triggered by the user calling the new interactive
function `use-package-install-deferred-package', or by the feature
declared by the `use-package' form being required. This latter
behavior seems to be the simplest way to make sure that package
installation actually takes place when it needs to, but it requires
that an advice be added to `require', which may be considered overly
intrusive. (Also, it's generally considered bad practice for functions
in Emacs to put advice on other functions in Emacs.) Thus it may make
sense to add an option or function to explicitly enable this behavior,
if there does not turn out to be a better way to accomplish deferred
installation.
Documentation has not been updated to reflect :defer-install yet.