Re: Inexplicable flaw: non-overridable .emacs

[Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com>]

kj wrote:
> In <mailman.972.1173989687.7795.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
>>> From: kj <socyl@987jk.com.invalid>
>>> Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:15:15 +0000 (UTC)
>>>
>>> Please correct me if I'm wrong, it is my understanding that one
>>> cannot use a command-line switch to tell emacs to read a config
>>> file *other* than the standard ~/.emacs.
> 
>> You are only partly wrong: Emacs has a --load command-line switch that
>> would load any file you name.  But such loading is not 100% equivalent
>> to how Emacs loads a .emacs file, because .emacs is read at a certain
>> point during the Emacs session startup, while files given via --load
>> are read at a different point.  So the effects could be subtly
>> different, especially with respect to display setup.
> 
> That's good to know, thanks, but, again, I'm puzzled: why would
> Emacs treat ~/.emacs differently from a user-specified alternative?

Because ~/.emacs is loaded between default.el and site-start.el, after
the so-called initial command line options are processed but before the
so-called action options.  If your installation doesn't have a
site-start.el file, you should be OK -- modulo display setup, as Eli
points out.

> It seems perversely unaccommodating on Emacs' part (even if only
> in a passive-agressive sort of way :)  )

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA