Re: `custom-file' and init-file [was: user-controlled load-path extension: load-dir]

[Evans Winner <ego111@gmail.com>]

,------ Drew Adams wrote ------

|    By itself, that wouldn't clue users in.  A separate
|    question would be whether to also have an (almost)
|    empty `.emacs' by default, containing just an explicit
|    load of `custom-file'.  I'd say yes.

Out of curiosity, would this complicate the process of Emacs
installation?  Is the idea that the first time a user runs
Emacs, it checks to see if there is a .emacs in (getenv
"HOME"), and if not, creates it?  Would that complicate
things for system administrators?  Presumably they should
use site-init.el, but I know some add some kind of simple
.emacs file to the user account creation routine.

By the way, for the default location of the custom file, I
would suggest ~/.emacs.d.  Right now my ~/.emacs.d is filled
with things put there by elpa, predictive, org-mode, rcirc,
my bookmarks file is there.  I used to put my own one-off
third-party libraries there, but I gave up and now put them
in ~/emacs.  I also put my own hacks in ~/.emacs-local and
use the `load-dir' function I posted to load all that.
Anyway, the convention seems to be that things
auto-generated by Emacs and such things belong in
~/.emacs.d.

|    Users would be free to add their own Lisp
|    customizations before or after the load of
|    `custom-file'.  

I think this is important.  I only use the customize
interface, really, when I don't understand something well
enough to handle it in my .emacs.  Actually, there's not
much left in my custom file now, because I tend to move
things out of it to my own init routines as soon as I do
understand something.  I like to feel like I know what is
going on, and like I can change things just by typing in a
buffer, instead of fiddling with the customize interface.
The result, and I can't be alone in this, is that I make the
call to load the custom file at the beginning of my .emacs,
so that if I happen to have defined something twice by
mistake (or because I am too lazy to fix it) the result will
be whatever I have defined in my .emacs.