Re: emacs21

["Sean 'Shaleh' Perry" <shalehperry@attbi.com>]

On 03-Mar-2002 Harry Putnam wrote:
> A fairly long-time emacs user, I'm accustomed to using a site-start.el
> file as a place to do general things. In my single user system it can be
> quite a lot since no one else is stuck with it.
> 
> Having installed the emac21 package, it seems my site-start.el file from
> other installs elsewhere, is not recognized as an init file and is not
> loaded eventhough it is in the `path' and its directory
> /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp shows up in 
> 
>        C-h v load-path <RET>
> 
> However changing its name to default.el causes it to be read as an init
> file.  I don't see this behavior on several other installations of 
> emacs-21 (from source) on other machines.  
> 
> I know default.el has long been a name that emacs recognizes as init but
> so has site-start.el, far as I know.
> I wondered if this change is something to do with my installation or if
> it is something debian has setup.
> 

can't help here, sorry.

> Also curious about the the way files get installed with emacs21 and
> emacsen-common  packages.
> 
> I see it sets up /usr/share/emacs  with subs of site-lisp and emacs-21
> when the default is /usr/local/share/emacs/ <subs>. 
> 
> It also creates the ones under /usr/local but they are empty.  Why both?
> 
> Seems like, if the official deb emacs21 is going to use /usr/share then
> it would leave /usr/local/share for possible source built emacs for
> developement or what ever.  That would provide a handy way to keep the
> separate and head off cluttered path type problems.
> 

/usr/local is where non packaged things are supposed to live.  If you did not
get it from a Debian package, we do not expect to see it anywhere else but
/usr/local (outside of home dirs of course).  Debian packages create the
/usr/local dirs so the user has a place to put things and ensures the packages
know how to read from the /usr/local dirs.  Perl, python, tcl, all do this as
well.