Re: Default emacs init file location confusion

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Elias Mårtenson <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2020 01:11:37 +0800
> Cc: Robert Pluim <address@hidden>, address@hidden, 
>       emacs-devel <address@hidden>
> 
> The confusion is that once I start Emacs without any configuration, the 
> $HOME/.config/emacs will be created,
> and after that the $HOME/.emacs.d will never be used, even though I don't 
> actually have a configuration yet.
> All I did was to start Emacs once.

But Emacs did that with ~/.emacs.d/ as well: it would create it if it
didn't exist when you first started.  It did that silently without any
warning.  How is this situation different?

The way to prevent the above is described in NEWS, btw.

> I don't think the $HOME/.config/emacs should be created until there is 
> actually a configuration to save. Or,
> alternatively, before the user have confirmed where they want the 
> configuration directory to be created.

I'm not sure this is practical: there must be gazillion places where
we assume that directory exists.  E.g., what about auto-saving? we
could defer the creation of the directory until we actually call
do-auto-save, but that will only buy us what, 30 sec?

> Since the $HOME/.config behaviour is new, it will not be easy for them to 
> figure out why nothing works and
> they will give up, perhaps never trying Emacs again.

We need to decide which directory to create if neither of the 2
candidates exist.  Previously, we had only one candidate, and we'd
create it without any regrets.  I don't think I see how the current
situation is suddenly different.  Moreover, I don't think I understand
how to do something smarter, without breaking gobs of code that
depends on user-emacs-directory be existing.  Ideas welcome.