customize -> save for future disrespects symlinks

customize -> save for future disrespects symlinks

[Michael Wardle]

This bug report will be sent to the Free Software Foundation,
not to your local site managers!
Please write in English, because the Emacs maintainers do not have
translators to read other languages for them.

Your bug report will be posted to the bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org mailing list,
and to the gnu.emacs.bug news group.

In GNU Emacs 21.4.1 (i386-pc-linux-gnu)
 of 2005-03-18 on trouble, modified by Debian
configured using `configure '--build=i386-linux' '--host=i386-linux' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' '--with-x=no' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2' 'build_alias=i386-linux' 'host_alias=i386-linux''
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_AU.utf8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

My Emacs initialization file $HOME/.emacs is a symbolic link to
$HOME/etc/emacs.  Basic operations on this file -- such as opening,
writing, and (I think) modifiying the file using the version control
mode (vc-mode) will dereference the symlink, make changes to the
symlink's destination, and leave the symlink in place.

When I did:
describe-variable sh-basic-offset
4=8
state save for future sessions

This added a custom-set-variables expression to the end of my
$HOME/.emacs file, but stripped the symlink such that $HOME/.emacs
no longer pointed to $HOME/etc/emacs.

Recent messages:
Creating customization buffer...
Loading wid-browse...done
Creating customization buttons...
Creating customization items...
Creating customization items ...done
Creating customization setup...
Creating customization buffer...done
widget-before-change: Text is read-only: "Change should be restricted to a single field"
Wrote /home/michael/.emacs
Loading emacsbug...done

Re: customize -> save for future disrespects symlinks

[Richard Stallman]

Does this replacement function make it work better?
(This is from the development sources and I don't know
if it works in Emacs 21.  But the crucial change is adding
the call to file-chase-links.)

(defun custom-file ()
  "Return the file name for saving customizations."
  (file-chase-links
   (or custom-file
       (let ((user-init-file user-init-file)
	     (default-init-file
	       (if (eq system-type 'ms-dos) "~/_emacs" "~/.emacs")))
	 (when (null user-init-file)
	   (if (or (file-exists-p default-init-file)
		   (and (eq system-type 'windows-nt)
			(file-exists-p "~/_emacs")))
	       ;; Started with -q, i.e. the file containing
	       ;; Custom settings hasn't been read.  Saving
	       ;; settings there would overwrite other settings.
	       (error "Saving settings from \"emacs -q\" would overwrite existing customizations"))
	   (setq user-init-file default-init-file))
	 user-init-file))))