Re: Changes in emacs.el

[Michael Heerdegen]

Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> writes:

> Sometimes I get a message that .emacs is read-only. This is true,
> because it is a link to an emacs.el file that is owned by root and
> read-only for the user.
> I get the question: do you want to write? If I say yes, it fails and
> my message/article is not send. If I say no it is also not send.
>
> I could live with it, because when I try to send it again, it
> succeeds. But annoying it is.
>
> When looking more closely I found that two things are changed.
>
> I have a custom-set-variables section and beside changing the sequence
> it adds (beside other things):
>       ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
>       ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
>       ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
>       ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
>      '(canlock-password "…")
>      '(delete-selection-mode nil)
>      '(mark-even-if-inactive t)
>
> It also adds:
> (custom-set-faces
>   ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
>   ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
>   ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
>   ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
>  )
>
> I do not have a custom-set-faces in the emacs.el.
>
> Why does emacs tries to change .emacs and can I circumvebt this?

I think you must only set `custom-file'.  From the doc:

| File used for storing customization information.
| The default is nil, which means to use your init file
| as specified by `user-init-file'.  If the value is not nil,
| it should be an absolute file name.


Regards,

Michael.