RE: [External] : Re: Default custom file was: Re: Propose to add setup-wizard.el to ELPA

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

>     Drew> If you want to continue to use only the init
>     Drew> file, just set `custom-file' to that file.
>     Drew> Or set a variable (TBD) to tell Emacs to never
>     Drew> load `custom-file' automatically.
> 
>     Drew> If you want to change, to use only `custom-file'
>     Drew> for `custom*' stuff, move such settings from
>     Drew> your init file to your `custom-file'.  (And yes,
>     Drew> we should have a command that does that moving.)
> 
> Making people who wish to retain long-standing behaviour set a
> variable or edit a config file for something as fundamental as loading
> and saving customizations is not something I would want, ever. The
> *only* case I can see where we could set custom-file to eg
> ~/.emacs.d/custom.el (and maybe load it automatically) is for people
> with no customizations.

It sounds like what you're really saying is that you
don't want Emacs to use `custom-file' for Custom
stuff, by default.

The advantages, for the great majority of users, and
in particular for new users, vastly outweigh the
inconvenience to anyone who _really_ wants to keep
things as they are for themselves.

They/you need only (setq custom-file THE-INIT-FILE).

They could always have done that.  And it's always
been essentially a no-op in similar situations -
see _function_ `custom-file', which is used by
`custom-save-all'.