When launching emacs with --init-directory option set to a relative path, I noticed that locate-user-emacs-file refers to a relative path. This means that every library that uses that function spawns files in visited directories instead that in the init-directory. 1) Open shell in home (~) 2) emacs -Q --init-directory .my-emacs.d 3) C-x C-f ~/other-directory RET 4) M-: (locate-user-emacs-file "some-file") RET result: ~/other-directory/.my-emacs.d/some-file expected: ~/.my-emacs.d/some-file It happens both starting with -Q or not. The problem does not happen when an absolute path is passed as --init-directory option argument. Perhaps the user-emacs-directory should be parsed as absolute path at startup? Thanks, Tommaso In GNU Emacs 30.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.33, cairo version 1.16.0) of 2022-11-30 built on xubuntu-new Repository revision: 26c2ebd0ddcea2c64715dbb33b21e04e4e3dc136 Repository branch: master Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12101003 System Description: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS Configured using: 'configure --with-cairo --with-modules --with-gnutls --with-native-compilation --with-json --with-harfbuzz --with-imagemagick --with-jpeg --with-png --with-rsvg --with-tiff' Configured features: CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ IMAGEMAGICK JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBSELINUX LIBXML2 MODULES NATIVE_COMP NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS X11 XDBE XIM XINPUT2 XPM GTK3 ZLIB Important settings: value of $LC_MONETARY: it_IT.UTF-8 value of $LC_NUMERIC: it_IT.UTF-8 value of $LC_TIME: it_IT.UTF-8 value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t eldoc-mode: t show-paren-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t line-number-mode: t indent-tabs-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message mailcap yank-media puny dired dired-loaddefs rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg rfc6068 epg-config gnus-util text-property-search time-date mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils comp comp-cstr warnings icons subr-x rx cl-seq cl-macs gv cl-extra help-mode cl-loaddefs cl-lib bytecomp byte-compile rmc iso-transl tooltip cconv eldoc paren electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type elisp-mode mwheel term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch easymenu timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax font-core term/tty-colors frame minibuffer nadvice seq simple cl-generic indonesian philippine cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite emoji-zwj charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help abbrev obarray oclosure cl-preloaded button loaddefs theme-loaddefs faces cus-face macroexp files window text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget keymap hashtable-print-readable backquote threads dbusbind inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting cairo move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit xinput2 x multi-tty make-network-process native-compile emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 72312 10187) (symbols 48 7132 0) (strings 32 21167 3230) (string-bytes 1 662685) (vectors 16 17623) (vector-slots 8 311090 14918) (floats 8 39 37) (intervals 56 224 0) (buffers 984 11))