I'm interested in standardizing the emacs configurations that a few of us use (~5 people).
Is there a way to install ELPA packages from lisp functions that can be included in a script if we know the set of packages we want? All I can find is how to call up list-packages and install individual packages graphically.
What you need is to use package-install function, like:
(mapc 'package-install install-list)
the install-list variable should contain a list of names of packages that you want to install.