Re: puzzled with load-path entries - where do they come from when .emacs is empty?

[Xah <xahlee@gmail.com>]

Mirko <mvuko...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
> I am using emacs 22.1 on windows & I am puzzled with the components of
> load-path: where are they coming from:

> Even if I completely comment out all of my .emacs, and my
> EMACSLOADPATH is empty, when I start up emacs, my load-path is full of
> stuff: slime, planner, muse, auctex,... that I use.  But since I
> commented all of the code in .emacs where did that stuff come from?
> Again, my .emacs is completely commented out.
> ...
> I found site-lisp/site-start.d with auctex.el and preview-latex.el.
> That explains the auctex message during startup.  But still no clue as
> to where load-path gets preloaded.
>
> Actually, could it be that emacs populates load-path automatically
> based on the contents of the site-lisp directory?  That would explain
> everything.

basically all langs, e.g. perl, java, python, php, mathematica,
provides you with a default load path, so that basic functionalities
are available.

if emacs doesn't provide you with a default path, all the basic major
modes, c, java, perl, shell, dired ... and probably most of
fundamental working of emacs will break.

At a user level, if you want absolutely the minimal stuff in load
path, start emacs with --no-site-file --no-init-file. You'll probably
still see entries in load path though. If for some reason you simply
don't want any, you can set it to empty and see what is the effect, or
hack emacs's source.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄