Re: Custom Et Al: Build-Up The Underlying Platform was Re: A new user perspective about "Changes for emacs 28"

[Ergus]

On Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 08:53:14AM -0700, Drew Adams wrote:
> > From: Tim Cross ...
>
> Lots of interesting suggestions and observations.
>
> In particular, this one:
>
>  rather than the 'custom section' or custom file
>  would be to have custom write individual files
>  into a ~/.emacs.d/custom directory?
>
> (I'd prefer that the dir location be the value of
> a user option, with ~/.emacs.d/custom as default value.  But I think the idea 
> is a good one.)
> ___
>
>
> One thing I wouldn't mind having is some kind of timestamp on each 
> `custom-set-variables' and `custom-set-faces' entry.  Or something equivalent.  
> Or optional sorting by recency of modification.  Or maybe such info in a 
> separate log file.
>
> Just a spur-of-the-moment thought, not carefully considered.  It comes from 
> seeing an entry and wondering when the hell I added it (or why). ;-)

In general having more and more files to read on startup is bad for
startup time and organization (not all of us have ssd).

Improving the current custom but sorting, grouping or anything is in my
opinion a better approach.

I would also prefer that the custom file will be separated by default to
prevent emacs changing the user's init file so it can be tracked with
git without needing:

```
(setq custom-file (expand-file-name "custom.el" user-emacs-directory))

(unless (file-exists-p custom-file)
  (write-region "" nil custom-file))

(load custom-file)
```