Re: customize

[Edward Welbourne <eddy@opera.no>]

> custom-set-* doesn't have to come last in ~/.emacs.
but customize always adds it at the end.

> After it is there, you can add stuff in ~/.emacs after it.
and get a layer-cake of intermingled fragments, some of one's own
construction, others added by customize (and marked with a warning
against modifying them other than via the customize UI), which will
make it harder to keep track of what's going on, what one can safely
modify, etc.; maintenance nightmare.

Meanwhile, this adds opportunities for customize (if we don't assume
it has no bugs in it) to get confused by the intermingling and, e.g.,
either fail to notice some of its earlier works or mistake some
user-elisp for customize insertions.

Having customize add everything it does to a single file, maintained
entirely via the customize UI, loaded at a well-considered moment in
one's start-up sequence, will provide for tidier source-management,
easier maintenance, better control over the start-up process, less
opportunity for any bugs in customize to manifest themselves and
probably less bugs in initialisation.

As Jeff pointed out, it also makes it easier to cope with switching
between different versions of emacs.

		Eddy.