On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 09:28:26PM +0000, Drew Adams wrote:
> @@>>>> Customize should not write to your init file ...
> @@>>>> That's a bad Emacs design choice, IMO.
> @@>>>> It especially should not be the default behavior.
> > >>>
> > >>> +1, FWIW.
> > >> Hmm, then where should it write to?
> > > IMO, something like
> > > (setq custom-file (locate-user-emacs-file "custom-file.el"))
> > 
> > Hmm.  I recently deleted something like that which had been in my init
> > for years, because I looked it and couldn't come up with a reason why
> > the code should be in a separate file.  It seemed like pointless
> > complexity.  Why do you think it's better that way?
> 
> Go to @@.

Where's @@?

(genuine question: I don't know what you want to convey with that
expression :)

> Mixing hand coding and automatic coding in the same
> file is error-prone.  It's just asking for trouble.
> And it's not needed.

And this is the point where your (respected, mind you) opinion enters
the scene. We're taking that risk all the time whenever several people
work on the same code. You might argue they understand the code they're
changing, but then, we are doing it mechanically too, whenever we do a
VC merge, and this relies generally on simple textual distance to
"declare" that two changes are independent. Courage :)

Having a comment marker

;; here be lions
...
;; end of lions

... as customize has been doing --uh-- customarily should suffice
perfectly (for some users, some contexts).

As for what should be the recommended way, I still agree with you 100%.
I still don't agree that there should be extra code to enforce that.

What would make me happy is to supply a minimal init.el file already
containing the "include" and a minimal (empty) custom.el for new
installations.

Cheers
-- 
t

>