Re: defcustom: changing from defvar - order of execution

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> The user in setup #2 has never used the library, let's say (and so, does not
> have the setq in .emacs). The user knows nothing about setq and Lisp; he
> just copies the text "(load-library "foo")(foo-fn)", per the library
> comments, to his .emacs. He fires up Emacs, and then uses Customize to set
> and save foovar. This causes (custom-set-variables...) to be added to the
> end of his .emacs - after the load-library and the call to foo-fn.

> The user is then surprised to find that the customization had no effect: in
> subsequent Emacs sessions, load-library does the defcustom, which sets
> foovar to nil; and foo-fn then executes with foovar=nil, returning `t'.

> What am I missing?

That this situation you describe is just a bug in the elisp library.
Most likely in the comment that suggests "(load-library "foo")(foo-fn)",
but it's hard to say without more info.
In any case the scenario you describe doesn't seem to be common.


        Stefan