suggestion for user-emacs-directory

suggestion for user-emacs-directory

[Dieter Faulbaum]

Dear all,

I use (at least) 3 versions of emacs on one computer, one from the
Debian-package, the newer one from here
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-27.1.tar.xz and the snapshot 
from
git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git/.
They tend to have different customizable variables (and others).

So I have these variables set in my (early-)init.el:

(setq emacs-name "emacs"
      emacs-major-minor-version (format "%d.%d" 
      emacs-major-version
					emacs-minor-version)
      user-emacs-directory (concat "~/.etc/" emacs-name "/"
      emacs-major-minor-version))


Maybe not the most elegant way but this works for me to 
distinguish
these versions.

Would it be good, if the user-emacs-directory not only becomes
"per-user Emacs-specific"
but also
"per-user per-emacs-version Emacs-specific"
in a similar way? (as an example: gimp does it likewise.-)

Thanks for thinking about this.

Dieter

Re: suggestion for user-emacs-directory

[Stefan Monnier]

> I use (at least) 3 versions of emacs on one computer, one from the
[...]
> Maybe not the most elegant way but this works for me to distinguish
> these versions.
[...]
> Would it be good, if the user-emacs-directory not only becomes
> "per-user Emacs-specific"

My 80KB .emacs doesn't rely on any kind of "version" info, yet I use it
unchanged with Emacs-24, Emacs-25, Emacs-26, Emacs-27, and Emacs-git
(and occasionally XEmacs).

I think it's easier to do that than to keep various configs synchronized
between the different versions they support.  But of course, nothing
prevents you from setting `user-emacs-directory` to a version-specific
directory.


        Stefan

Re: suggestion for user-emacs-directory

[David Masterson]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> My 80KB .emacs doesn't rely on any kind of "version" info, yet I use it
> unchanged with Emacs-24, Emacs-25, Emacs-26, Emacs-27, and Emacs-git
> (and occasionally XEmacs).
>
> I think it's easier to do that than to keep various configs synchronized
> between the different versions they support.  But of course, nothing
> prevents you from setting `user-emacs-directory` to a version-specific
> directory.

How do you deal with packages that don't exist in earlier Emacsen?

-- 
David Masterson

Re: suggestion for user-emacs-directory

[Stefan Monnier]

> How do you deal with packages that don't exist in earlier Emacsen?

Usually with

    (if (fboundp '<something>)
      ...)

or

    (if (boundp '<something>)
      ...)

or even

    (ignore-errors ...)


-- Stefan

Re: suggestion for user-emacs-directory

[David Masterson]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> How do you deal with packages that don't exist in earlier Emacsen?
>
> Usually with
>
>     (if (fboundp '<something>)
>       ...)
>
> or
>
>     (if (boundp '<something>)
>       ...)
>
> or even
>
>     (ignore-errors ...)

Ah, thanks.

-- 
David Masterson

Re: suggestion for user-emacs-directory

[Bob Newell]

> My 80KB .emacs doesn't rely on any kind of "version" info, yet I use it
> unchanged with Emacs-24, Emacs-25, Emacs-26, Emacs-27, and Emacs-git
> (and occasionally XEmacs).

Recently I've ended up with some Emacs-27 installations on my
Linux machines, but still on Emacs-26 on my Termux
installations.

I have almost no compatibility problems installations with my
init files or packages, with just a little bit of added code
to check a few things.

But I do have problems with .elc incompatibilities, and I've
had to resort to having separate 'elpa' directories based on
version number. It was okay to sync packages and custom code
across installations when they were all the same version, but
not with a mixed setup.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

- Via GNU/Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB