Re: What about a seperate "HOME" environment variable under w32?

[Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>]

David Kastrup wrote:

>"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
>  
>
>>>Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 20:08:51 +0800
>>>From: Sun Yijiang <sunyijiang@gmail.com>
>>>
>>>The %HOME% environment variable is used by many programs under w32, so it's
>>>really a mess sometime.
>>>      
>>>
>>Is HOME used for any other purpose than Emacs does: to store the
>>user's private init files?  If some programs use HOME for conflicting
>>purposes, could you please name those programs and describe the
>>details?
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I suggest Emacs use a different HOME variable=20
>>>underw32, something like %EMACS_HOME% or %EHOME%.
>>>      
>>>
>>I don't think we should introduce such a variable without a very good
>>reason; hence the questions above.
>>    
>>
>
>kpathsea, the library for most TeX systems, has a scheme where you can
>override most environment variables on a per-application base.
>
>An analog construction for Emacs would be to something like
>(or (getenv "HOME.emacs") (getenv "HOME"))
>
>  
>
If HOME is not set as an environment variable on w32, Emacs will read it 
from the registry (also used as the equivalent of .Xdefaults). Perhaps 
we could change the priority of these, so that the registry overrides 
the environment, since users are unlikely to set a specific HOME for 
Emacs in the registry and then expect to override it by changing their 
environment.