Re: best gnu/linux distro for emacs

[Alan Mackenzie]

Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> Jay Belanger wrote:
>> > I recall there were some complaints that Debian had some odd Emacs
>> > setup; I don't recall the details, but I seem to recall David Kastrup
>> > pointing them out.  Does anybody remember?
 
>> They put a dummy site-start.el under /etc somewhere.  This can catch you
>> out if you have your real site-start.el in a normal Emacs place such as
>> /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.el since the dummy one gets
>> loaded instead of the real one.

> The empty template file is:

>  /etc/emacs/site-start.el

> What makes /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.el the normal
> path and /etc/emacs/site-start.el something not normal?

A very good question!  I've had a quick search of the Emacs manual and not
found anything specifying the contents of load-path.  The next best thing
was:

"Many sites put these files in a subdirectory named `site-lisp' in the
Emacs installation directory, such as `/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp'."

, from the chapter "The Emacs Initialization File".  I'm confident that
/etc/emacs exists nowhere in the manual.

When I start emacs -Q, load-path contains the directories under
/usr/local/share/emacs/24.3/lisp together with
/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp.  So it would seem, for a standard build,
that .../site-lisp is the only safe place for site-start.el.

Presumably, there's a way of setting load-path as part of the build
process, and the Debian Emacs team uses it.

> In any case...  One could always put the customizations in that file.
> That is rather what is expected.  Or one could add a load statement
> there to load /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.el if you
> want to keep the customizations there.  It is six of one or a half
> dozen of the other.

GRRR!!!  Yes, one can do any of these things, but only after having
discovered there's a problem which needs fixing, and diagnosing that
problem.  This cost me, perhaps, an hour or two back in 2005 when I
first installed Debian on a new PC, and my site-start.el wasn't loading.

> Bob

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).