Unable to install civicrm_views

When attempting to enable the civicrm_views module in Drupal 8, I get the error described in CRM-20973

This comes back to this line in civicrm_views.views.inc:

  // We make a bogus call to civicrm_api() so that it will include its requisite files
  // for the two function calls below. Yes, this is gross — but that's what you get it if you break autoloading conventions.
  civicrm_api(NULL, NULL, array());

https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-drupal/blob/8.x-master/modules/civicrm_views/civicrm_views.views.inc#L666

The thing is, it doesn't actually even work as described in the comment: the files don't get autoloaded by making that bogus API call! So, we should probably not do that at all, and use a different method to get the API files loaded