Re: persistent storage for Emacs packages

[Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>]

Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca> writes:
>I am developing a small Emacs extension I would like to distribute as a
>package. This package provides an interface to the GRASS gis software.
>During initialization, a table of completions is generated. This takes
>several minutes, but only needs to be done once. Where should I be saving
>this data?
>
>I'm currently using customize-save-variable, but as users aren't expected
>to modify the values directly this is not correct. Is there a location I
>can count on having read and write access to across platforms? Or should I
>be requiring each user to specify the location of the data file as a
>customization option?
>
>I would appreciate any suggestions.

I had a similar need, and developed a system for generic persistent
storage from Emacs.  It lives only in my .emacs right now, but that is
online and freely licensed here:

  http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/kfogel/trunk/.emacs

Look at the functions named `kf-persist-*' and comments therearound.

If it looks useful to you, I'd be fine with moving it out of my .emacs
and having it packaged in some more normal way.

Best,
-Karl