dsill@NSWC-OAS.ARPA (Dave Sill) (11/09/88)
Why doesn't the following command work:
(setq load-path '("/local/dev/src/18.52/lisp" "/ef80/dsill/lib"))
It's in ~/.emacsrc, and I invoke Emacs as "emacs -l ~/.emacsrc". The
rest of the commands in .emacsrc are executed, and if I manually load
.emacsrc everything seems to work right.
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-- Anonymous Analyst in Datamationmgkelley@bbn.com (Matthew G. Kelley) (11/09/88)
Dave Sill writes: >Why doesn't the following command work: >(setq load-path '("/local/dev/src/18.52/lisp" "/ef80/dsill/lib")) > >It's in ~/.emacsrc, and I invoke Emacs as "emacs -l ~/.emacsrc". The >rest of the commands in .emacsrc are executed, and if I manually load >.emacsrc everything seems to work right. I don't have an answer, but I have found similar behavior in a number of other situations. As one example, if I have the line: (text-mode) in my .emacs file, then when I start up Emacs, the initial buffer is in initial-major-mode, not text-mode. But, if I do a M-x load-file .emacs after I'm already in Emacs, then the buffer is put into text-mode as expected. Another point of interest is that the characteristic I want is in effect _during_ the loading, but then reverts to the previous state after the loading is finished. (I.e., the code in my .emacs file sees text-mode, not initial-major-mode). So, can anyone enlighten me as to the logic of all this (if there is any)?
choo@aqua.cs.yale.edu (young-il choo) (11/10/88)
In article <32024@bbn.COM> dsill@NSWC-OAS.ARPA (Dave Sill) writes:
Why doesn't the following command work:
(setq load-path '("/local/dev/src/18.52/lisp" "/ef80/dsill/lib"))
It's in ~/.emacsrc, and I invoke Emacs as "emacs -l ~/.emacsrc". The
rest of the commands in .emacsrc are executed, and if I manually load
.emacsrc everything seems to work right.
The answer is that it does work.
The problem is that after .emacsrc is loaded something else is reseting the
load-path -- most likely a locally defined file called "default.el"
If you look in ../lisp/starup.el at "command-line", when emacs starts, it
first processes all the command line arguments (including your -l
~/.emacsrc) and then it loads the user default ~/.emacs AND THEN it loads
default.el, UNLESS, you (setq inhibit-default-init t).
The solution is to (setq inhibit-default-init t), but check your
../local/default.el to see that nothing important is being ignored.
-- Young-il Choo
----------------- Yale Computer Science -- choo-young-il@cs.yale.edu --mgkelley@bbn.com (Matthew G. Kelley) (11/10/88)
[Suggestion to use (setq inhibit-default-init t) to avoid having load-path be reset after setting it in initialization.] I think that a better solution is to use set-variable instead of setq: (set-variable 'load-path <mumble>) This works because (I think) the real problem is actually that the symbol load-path is getting captured somewhere during the loading of the initialization file, with something like: (let ((load-path <mumble2>)) (... (setq load-path <mumble>))) When execution comes out of the let, the new value of load-path is lost. I'm sure this is what happens if a file is loaded with the -l option, but I can't find it for the initialization file. Matt
gildea@ALEXANDER.BBN.COM (Stephen Gildea) (11/22/88)
There are some initializations that are done after the .emacs file is read. These include terminal-dependent initializations and creating the *scratch* buffer. This is why the form (text-mode) seems to have no effect in a .emacs file. See the function command-line in lisp/startup.el for details. The original question, from Dave Sill, why setting load-path in a file loaded with the -load command-line option doesn't work, seems to point to a bug in Emacs. During the loading of a file with -load, the variable load-path is locally bound, thus any attempt to set it from the loaded file will be undone as soon as the file is finished loading. < Stephen