Alternate location for .emacs?

Alternate location for .emacs?

[Ross A. Laird]

I would like to store my .emacs in a location other than ~/.
Is this possible? (I'm sure it is; it's Emacs, after all...)

-- 
Ross A. Laird, PhD
www.rosslaird.info

Re: Alternate location for .emacs?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 16.06.2009 um 19:13 schrieb Ross A. Laird:

> I would like to store my .emacs in a location other than ~/.
> Is this possible?


It's not that easy ... (finding the right decision)

You could patch your private version.
You could set the new place in the system init file.
You could just use ~/.emacs.d or ~/_emacs.d in non-UNIX systems.
You could create a dummy user account and use that user's init file.
You could set user-emacs-directory on the command line (or a script/ 
alias).

Are there more possible ways? Just one for more than a hand full,  
half a dozen!

--
Greetings

   Pete

Only useless documentation transcends the first two laws.
				– Arnold's Third Law of Documentation

Re: Alternate location for .emacs?

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE>:

> Am 16.06.2009 um 19:13 schrieb Ross A. Laird:
>
>> I would like to store my .emacs in a location other than ~/.
>> Is this possible?
>
>
> It's not that easy ... (finding the right decision)
>
> [...]
>
> Are there more possible ways? Just one for more than a hand full, half
> a dozen!

You forgot the most obvious. What I do: ~/.emacs is a symlink to the
real .emacs (which is kept in a directory of stuff I maintain in cvs).

-- 
* Harald Hanche-Olsen     <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
  when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
  -- Bertrand Russell

Re: Alternate location for .emacs?

[Ross A. Laird]

Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@math.ntnu.no> writes:

> + Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE>:
>
>> Am 16.06.2009 um 19:13 schrieb Ross A. Laird:
>>
>>> I would like to store my .emacs in a location other than ~/.
>>> Is this possible?
>>
>>
>> It's not that easy ... (finding the right decision)
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> Are there more possible ways? Just one for more than a hand full, half
>> a dozen!
>
> You forgot the most obvious. What I do: ~/.emacs is a symlink to the
> real .emacs (which is kept in a directory of stuff I maintain in cvs).

Thanks for all the help.

,----
| You forgot the most obvious. What I do: ~/.emacs is a symlink to the
| real .emacs (which is kept in a directory of stuff I maintain in cvs).
`----

This is exactly what I was looking for. I want to keep my .emacs in my
bazaar directory.

-- 
Ross A. Laird, PhD
www.rosslaird.info

Re: Alternate location for .emacs?

[Bill White]

On Tue Jun 16 2009 at 12:13, ross@rosslaird.info (Ross A. Laird) wrote:

> I would like to store my .emacs in a location other than ~/.  Is this
> possible? (I'm sure it is; it's Emacs, after all...)

I added ~/bin to my path, then created shell scripts there with
distinctive names:

,----[ ~/bin/emacs ]
| /home/billw/software/emacs/src/emacs -q -l /home/billw/mnt/raid/emacs/home/.emacs
`----

,----[ ~/bin/wriemacs ]
| /home/billw/software/emacs/src/emacs -q -l /home/billw/mnt/raid/emacs/wri/.emacs
`----

/home/billw/software/emacs/ is my checkout dir from savannah, compiled
in place.

Cheers -

bw
-- 
Bill White . billw@wolfram.com . http://members.wolfram.com/billw
"No ma'am, we're musicians."

Re: Alternate location for .emacs?

[B. T. Raven]

Ross A. Laird wrote:
> I would like to store my .emacs in a location other than ~/.
> Is this possible? (I'm sure it is; it's Emacs, after all...)
> 

I keep mine in C:\emacs but to do this I need the environment variable 
HOME=C:\eamcs. I'm sure you can do the same under linux. If any gurus 
are paying attention, how can I have c:/emacs23/emacs.exe find a 
different .emacs on w32? I used to use batch files for versions 21 and 
22 but that seems too hokey to me now.

Ed