Re: :file keyword for Customize

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 08 May 2008 18:08:36 +0100 Jason Rumney <address@hidden> wrote: 

JR> Drew Adams wrote:
>> The granularity for Customize customizations, in terms of persistence and
>> loading is currently all or none: everything is in one file (`custom-file' or
>> `init-file').
JR> JDEE at least, saves its own customizations in project files in the
JR> local directory. I think Gnus also lets you save your Gnus related
JR> customizations in .gnus. That is why I suggested looking at what those
JR> packages do.

Gnus has two kinds of settings: normal ELisp variables, customized and
used as usual, and newsrc settings, which go into .newsrc.eld.  There
are a few others, like the Gnus registry and score files, but generally
the two groups above are the major ones.  There's some magic with the
group/topic parameters that I can explain but it wouldn't matter much
for what Drew proposed.

.gnus.el is just ELisp code, nothing special.  Gnus doesn't set anything
special for the ELisp variables it defines, so if they are customized,
they will be saved in the usual places.

FWIW, I would make custom-file accept an alist of defgroup/defcustom
symbol name regex, associated with a file name or a function.  That puts
the power in the user's hands, yet allows package authors to add to the
alist.  The big win is that no special :file keyword is needed, and all
existing packages will work with or without this special settings.

Ted