~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[Jay Belanger]

I recently got a message from a user who was having trouble starting
Calc when he had Calc settings saved in `calc-settings-file', which by
default is "~/.emacs.d/calc.el".  The user has "~/.emacs.d/" in his load
path, and so when Calc is started Emacs will look in his settings file
"~/.emacs.d/calc.el" instead of ".../lisp/calc/calc.el" for autoloaded
functions.
Is "~/.emacs.d/" often in the load path?

I can change the default value of `calc-settings-file' to something that
will avoid the conflict mentioned above (while still using
"~/.emacs.d/calc.el" if it exists), but should such a change wait for
the 24.1 release?

Jay

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[chad]

I've never seen it happen before, but that's hearsay.

Searching for `.emacs.d' on EmacsWiki, I see that it tells users explicitly not to do this (for exactly the reason that your user found) in the sections describing startup files, the first two results:

	emacswiki.org/emacs/DotEmacsDotD
	emacswiki.org/emacs/LoadPath

Seems like good news.  I also found a couple examples of people doing it (TimAnderson, ExtraLicense) in the first page of search results, which is less good news.

Hope that helps,
*Chad


On Mar 6, 2012, at 7:53 AM, Jay Belanger wrote:

> 
> I recently got a message from a user who was having trouble starting
> Calc when he had Calc settings saved in `calc-settings-file', which by
> default is "~/.emacs.d/calc.el".  The user has "~/.emacs.d/" in his load
> path, and so when Calc is started Emacs will look in his settings file
> "~/.emacs.d/calc.el" instead of ".../lisp/calc/calc.el" for autoloaded
> functions.
> Is "~/.emacs.d/" often in the load path?
> 
> I can change the default value of `calc-settings-file' to something that
> will avoid the conflict mentioned above (while still using
> "~/.emacs.d/calc.el" if it exists), but should such a change wait for
> the 24.1 release?
> 
> Jay
> 

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[Jay Belanger]

> I've never seen it happen before, but that's hearsay.
>
> Searching for `.emacs.d' on EmacsWiki, I see that it tells users
> explicitly not to do this

That was a good idea.  I checked the manual with no luck, but it didn't
occur to me to check the wiki.  While the wiki isn't official (as far as
I know), if not putting .emacs.d in the load path is the official policy
perhaps it should be mentioned in the manual.

> Hope that helps,

Thanks,
Jay

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Jay Belanger writes:

 > That was a good idea.  I checked the manual with no luck, but it didn't
 > occur to me to check the wiki.  While the wiki isn't official (as far as
 > I know), if not putting .emacs.d in the load path is the official policy
 > perhaps it should be mentioned in the manual.

FWIW, the corresponding practice of putting "~/.xemacs/" in load-path
is an even worse idea in XEmacs, as generic customizations are kept in
~/.xemacs/custom.el by default, which would shadow the custom library.

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[Stefan Monnier]

We could add a sanity check after loading .emacs if it's a common
enough problem.  Of course, a more general shadowing check would also be
good, tho some shadowings are done on purpose so we'd need to figure out
a way to silence the warnings for those desired shadowings.


        Stefan

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[Lennart Borgman]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 18:15, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> We could add a sanity check after loading .emacs if it's a common
> enough problem.  Of course, a more general shadowing check would also be
> good, tho some shadowings are done on purpose so we'd need to figure out
> a way to silence the warnings for those desired shadowings.

Why not just add the shadowing check and then think about the warnings
that should be silenced as they show up?

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[Stefan Monnier]

>> We could add a sanity check after loading .emacs if it's a common
>> enough problem.  Of course, a more general shadowing check would also be
>> good, tho some shadowings are done on purpose so we'd need to figure out
>> a way to silence the warnings for those desired shadowings.
> Why not just add the shadowing check and then think about the warnings
> that should be silenced as they show up?

The shadowings won't show up here, but on end-user machines.  So there's
no need to wait for such shadowings to appear, they already exist
out there.


        Stefan

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[antono]

On Tue 06 Mar 2012 06:53:48 PM FET, Jay Belanger wrote:

 > I recently got a message from a user who was having trouble starting
 > Calc when he had Calc settings saved in `calc-settings-file', which by
 > default is "~/.emacs.d/calc.el".  The user has "~/.emacs.d/" in his load
 > path, and so when Calc is started Emacs will look in his settings file
 > "~/.emacs.d/calc.el" instead of ".../lisp/calc/calc.el" for autoloaded > functions.

 Good observation. Overall this liberal usage of ~/.emacs.d for
 different kinds of configs and caches does not looks good and leads to
 such ugly errors.

 What if Emacs define some emacs-cache-dir and emacs-data-dir variables
 and recomend to use them in extensions?

 What do you think, emacs gurus?

 Previous art:
 
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard
 - http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html

Re: ~/.emacs.d/ in load path (Calc file conflict)

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 19:59, antono <self@antono.info> wrote:

>  Good observation. Overall this liberal usage of ~/.emacs.d for
>  different kinds of configs and caches does not looks good and leads to
>  such ugly errors.
>
>  What if Emacs define some emacs-cache-dir and emacs-data-dir variables
>  and recomend to use them in extensions?

That's what user-emacs-directory (~/.emacs.d/ by default) is for.

>  What do you think

That ~/.emacs.d/ should not be in the load path.

    Juanma