Re: Eliminating "changed in Emacs outside of Customize"

[Stefan Monnier]

>     Was this unclear:

>       If you .emacs, or some third party code you
>       activate from ".emacs", contains "(setq foo 42)" and you change and
>       save "foo" from customize, you changes to the variable through
>       customize will be overwritten next time you start Emacs.

It's crystal clear to me, but let me try to rephrase it, to see if it helps
other people:

   - Let's imagine user Helen has had a (setq-default fill-column 42) in her
     .emacs (or maybe it's in some package that she doesn't even remember
     she's loading from a .emacs).
   - Now let's imagine that Helen notices that her fill-column is too small
     and she wants to set it to something else, like 70.
   - She does M-x customize-variable RET fill-column RET, then changes the
     value, then saves.
   - When she restarts, fill-column is 42 again.
   - Since she's not arrogant, she figures she must have made a mistake so
     she goes through the customize-variable thingy again.
   - When she restarts, fill-column is still stuck at 42.
   - Then comes M-x report-emacs-bug.

Of course the above problem will only happen if the (setq-default
fill-column 42) happens to be executed after Helen's custom-set-variables
(e.g. in a mode-hook or in one of the many poorly written major modes that
happily mess up global variables).


        Stefan