Re: Migrating .emacs Configuration File to Newer Emacsen

[Kevin Rodgers]

Norbert Grün wrote:
> Copying the .emacs file over to Cygwin's place resulted in a spate of
> error messages during Emacs 21.2.1 startup, I'd rather expected a few
> from file system references which are only three in two commands.
>
> Aye, I can fire up both and tediously browse both customisation trees
> one by one, but I'd prefer a tool that takes the old .emacs file and
> converts it to the new format. Perhaps in a "migrate.el(c)?" thus
> using Emacs' power?

The problem is that .emacs can contain any Emacs Lisp form, so it's not
amenable to conversion -- except for the forms inserted by custom.

Is it possible to dump the entire customization tree, perhaps by writing
out every customizable variable (whether it was actually customized or
not)?  Doing so in an uncustomized emacs would give you a file for a
simple diff-based comparison between 2 different Emacs versions -- it
could even be included in the distribution.  Of course, someone would
have to go back and generate that file for previously released versions
of Emacs, but it might be a worthwhile exercise.  If the differences
between 2 Emacs versions can be resolved by mapping old variable names
to new ones etc. then it should be possible to write a useful version of
migrate.el

--
Kevin Rodgers