Design #424: Emacs UI: Name of emacs init file - CoCoA-5 - CoCoA Project

Design #424

Emacs UI: Name of emacs init file

Added by John Abbott about 10 years ago. Updated over 9 years ago.

Status:

In Progress

Priority:

Low

Assignee:

Anna Maria Bigatti

Category:

EmacsUI

Target version:

CoCoA-5.?.?

Start date:

22 Jan 2014

Due date:

% Done:

10%

Estimated time:

7.00 h

Spent time:

0.75 h

Description

Starting emacs-24.3 with the current (M$) distribution produced a warning about the file name _emacs being obsolescent/deprecated. I suggest moving the file into .emacs.d/init.el thus avoiding M$ problems with files whose names begin with a dot.

Perhaps we should adopt the same convention for all distributions? To me it does seem almost redundant to have both the file .emacs and the directory .emacs.d/; I think it would be neater to have everything together in the .emacs.d/ directory.

Comments? Opinions?

History

#1 Updated by Anna Maria Bigatti about 10 years ago

John Abbott wrote:

Starting emacs-24.3 with the current (M$) distribution produced a warning about the file name _emacs being obsolescent/deprecated. I suggest moving the file into .emacs.d/init.el thus avoiding M$ problems with files whose names begin with a dot.

Perhaps we should adopt the same convention for all distributions? To me it does seem almost redundant to have both the file .emacs and the directory .emacs.d/; I think it would be neater to have everything together in the .emacs.d/ directory.

I don't have enough experience with M$ (except for installing cocoa on students' computers). I'm not sure it's wise to create .emacs.d/ directory: would that be recognised even though it starts with a dot?

I still have on my mac .emacs file. Is the directory better for some philosophical/practical reason?

Comments? Opinions?

#2 Updated by John Abbott about 10 years ago

Status changed from New to In Progress
% Done changed from 0 to 10

The current distribution for M$ already includes a .emacs.d directory, so it is certainly possible to create one, and M$ seems to accept without much fuss.

I have both .emacs and .emacs.d/ on my computer; it seems neater to me to have everything together in one place. I suppose I have a personal preference for putting it all in .emacs.d/ but no good technical reason springs to mind.

Maybe I should try it on my machine before recommending that everyone else does so :-)

#3 Updated by John Abbott about 10 years ago

Anna is unconvinced by the idea of forcing the user to accept a whole directory. Perhaps we could use the alternative init file name .emacs.el; at least the suffix gives a good clue that the file contains emacs lisp code.