Re: Suppressing native compilation (short and long term)

[Stefan Monnier]

> Though note that for reasons we can elaborate on if desired, it might be
> easier for us if the default for that variable could also be set via a
> corresponding environment variable, but that's a separate question.

Usually Emacs should obey $HOME so if you can set that to a tmp dir that
should let you avoid touching the user's real $HOME.

This said, there is some code in Emacs that prefers to use ~<user> over
$HOME in some cases (like `su` without the `-`).  I'm not sure exactly
where this happens, but I suspect that the following lines in
`startup.el` are part of the answer:

    ;; Figure out which user's init file to load,
    ;; either from the environment or from the options.
    (setq init-file-user (if noninteractive nil (user-login-name)))
    ;; If user has not done su, use current $HOME to find .emacs.
    (and init-file-user
         (equal init-file-user (user-real-login-name))
         (setq init-file-user ""))


-- Stefan