Re: best gnu/linux distro for emacs

[Oleksandr Gavenko]

On 2013-03-25, W. Greenhouse wrote:

> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
>
>>> Knowing this then if I am using a locally compiled program installed
>>> in /usr/local/bin and want to modify its configuration then I expect
>>> it to be configured in /usr/local somewhere usually /usr/local/etc but
>>> sometimes elsewhere.  If I am using a system package installed program
>>> in /bin (or /usr/bin) then I expect it to be configured somewhere in /
>>> usually /etc but sometimes elsewhere too but definitely not /usr/local.
>>
>> You have a point here.  :-)  Where I take issue with the Debian maintainer
>> (of 2005) is in creating a content-free file /etc/emacs/site-start.el.
>> That couldn't help but cause problems with a common pre-existing seup.
>
> The situation re: config file locations for Emacs in Debian hasn't
> changed.
>
> FWIW--and this is not to contradict or doubt that you found it
> frustrating the first time you were setting up Emacs in Debian, just a
> point of info for anyone in similar difficulties--most of the
> Debian-specific init for Emacs and Debian elisp packages is actually in
> /etc/emacs/site-start.d/ not /etc/emacs/site-start.el.  The .el[c] files
> there (non-recursive) are automatically run by the Debian-specific
> function `debian-run-directories'.  The distro is guaranteed not to
> overwrite any changes you make to the /etc/emacs/site-start.el; that's
> free for you to use.
>
>From /usr/share/doc/emacsen-common/debian-emacs-policy.gz (from
`emacsen-common` package):

  debian-startup, among other things, calls debian-run-directories.
  debian-run-directories collects the union of all the file base names
  (i.e. without any .el or .elc extension, and without the directory
  component: i.e. /etc/xemacs/site-start.d/50foo.elc => 50foo), then
  temporarily augments the emacs load path to include
  /etc/<flavor>/site-start.d and /etc/emacs/site-start.d in that
  order, and then calls (load base-name) in alphabetical order.

-- 
Best regards!