> The *only* case I can see where we could set custom-file to eg
> ~/.emacs.d/custom.el (and maybe load it automatically) is for people
> with no customizations.

Hmmm??? I don't get it... really and humbly sorry. My initial take is that
things will be clearer if you
split things between init.el and custom.el.
Customising and initialising are two different although related things.
I think it is less dangerous to delete the custom.el file and leave the
init.el file untouched than to edit
the .emacs or the init.el file. More so for novice users.

/PA

On Tue, 4 Jan 2022 at 18:14, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:

> >     Drew> If you want to continue to use only the init
> >     Drew> file, just set `custom-file' to that file.
> >     Drew> Or set a variable (TBD) to tell Emacs to never
> >     Drew> load `custom-file' automatically.
> >
> >     Drew> If you want to change, to use only `custom-file'
> >     Drew> for `custom*' stuff, move such settings from
> >     Drew> your init file to your `custom-file'.  (And yes,
> >     Drew> we should have a command that does that moving.)
> >
> > Making people who wish to retain long-standing behaviour set a
> > variable or edit a config file for something as fundamental as loading
> > and saving customizations is not something I would want, ever. The
> > *only* case I can see where we could set custom-file to eg
> > ~/.emacs.d/custom.el (and maybe load it automatically) is for people
> > with no customizations.
>
> It sounds like what you're really saying is that you
> don't want Emacs to use `custom-file' for Custom
> stuff, by default.
>
> The advantages, for the great majority of users, and
> in particular for new users, vastly outweigh the
> inconvenience to anyone who _really_ wants to keep
> things as they are for themselves.
>
> They/you need only (setq custom-file THE-INIT-FILE).
>
> They could always have done that.  And it's always
> been essentially a no-op in similar situations -
> see _function_ `custom-file', which is used by
> `custom-save-all'.
>
>

-- 
Fragen sind nicht da um beantwortet zu werden,
Fragen sind da um gestellt zu werden
Georg Kreisler