How to start emacs with a custom user-emacs-directory

Question

I'm working on a custom and small Emacs configuration that I want to share with some friends as a git repository for them to use as a baseline for their own future configurations.

For this I need some way to test my configuration and the simplest solution I can come up with is something like:

$ emacs --eval "(setq user-emacs-directory \"~/Code/my_custom_emacs.d/\")"

But I can't seem to make it work.

Any help much appreciated.

I read over Appendix C Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation but I did not find a simple command-line option to start Emacs with a custom .emacs.d directory unless you change HOME, which seems problematic to me. People have provided workarounds below, but, to me, this sounds like a very reasonable feature request for Emacs itself. — David J., Jan 01 '15 at 18:46
See also 49.4 The Emacs Initialization File which points to 49.4.4 How Emacs Finds Your Init File. — David J., Jan 01 '15 at 18:49
@DavidJames You're right: there is actually a wishlist item about this in Emacs' bug tracker. — François Févotte, Mar 06 '15 at 23:09
Update: it looks like this feature does not interest Emacs developers so much: the request has been tagged wontfix and closed in the bug tracker. — François Févotte, Mar 24 '16 at 20:52
@Francesco: I try a dynamic approach which allows to put the user Emacs directory outside "~". May be you will give a try. — antonio, Aug 07 '16 at 18:31
This drives me crazy about emacs. I keep all my config in ~/env/emacs and move it around and every time I do I have this problem. There's no good (non-brittle) solution. — demented hedgehog, Nov 17 '18 at 22:25
You can get this by moving to Emacs 29, and using --init-directory — Bret Weinraub, Dec 21 '22 at 17:57

score 53 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:52

The way I use to maintain several .emacs.d directories in parallel is the following.

emacs is started like this:

alias emacs='emacs -q --load "/path/to/init.el"'

Each init.el file begins like this, to correctly set up the user-init-file and user-emacs-directory variables:

(setq user-init-file (or load-file-name (buffer-file-name)))
(setq user-emacs-directory (file-name-directory user-init-file))

I have found this to work very reliably over the past months. Here are a few remarks:

it breaks emacs-init-time, which only reports the time needed to load the default system configuration, but not your own init file. If you're interested in benchmarking your init time, you'll have to do it another way (see for example How do I measure performance of elisp code?).
it is not equivalent to a normal startup and you'll need to take care of a few specific points. In particular:
- after-init-hook is run before the init file is loaded.
- The *scratch* buffer is created before the init file is loaded. You'll have to change its mode explicitly (instead of using initial-major-mode).
- You'll need to explicitly call package-initialize; it won't be done automatically
the path to init.el can be arbitrarily chosen; in particular, the directory in which init.el resides doesn't have to be named .emacs.d. I use this to have for example .emacs.d.23 alongside .emacs.d.24 in order to be able to switch between different versions of emacs (the system I'm using at work is passably outdated, and I can't install emacs 24 on all the machines I use).
this workflow doesn't require modifying the environment (and especially the HOME envvar), which can be desirable if you run programs from within emacs, which could be affected by the modified environment).

This does (in effect) alter the normal execution order, if you are considering the --loaded file to be the init file. For starters, it looks to me as if normal (default) package initialisation won't occur, and after-init-hook will run before the (fake) init file is evaluated. These are things that you can work around, certainly, but be aware that it's not exactly the same thing as Emacs using the specified path as the init file. — phils, Dec 10 '14 at 13:31
@phils yes, you're right. This does indeed change the normal execution order, and is not equivalent to using a regular init file. I edited my answer to reflect your point on after-init-hook. But I have to say that although I use this technique all the time, I never encountered any problem with after-init-hook (but I don't use it explicitly, and maybe I'm just lucky that the packages I use don't rely on it). What do you mean by "normal (default) package initialisation won't occur"? — François Févotte, Dec 10 '14 at 19:57
I mean that command-line won't call package-initialize in that situation. You would need to call it manually in the fake init file. — phils, Dec 10 '14 at 22:07
@phils thanks. I added this to the answer, along with a mention that the initial major mode must also be taken care of specifically. — François Févotte, Dec 11 '14 at 07:56

score 43 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 10 '14 at 07:29

43

The basic approach I use for this is to modify $HOME, by running:

env HOME=/path/to/dir emacs

You then use /path/to/dir/.emacs.d

You may wish to also symlink any files or directories of importance in this fake home dir back to the real ones, so that Emacs will see them.

answered Dec 10 '14 at 07:29

phils

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2

This works perfect! – Mattias Bengtsson Dec 10 '14 at 08:14
I've been tinkering for a while now with a script which grew out of this idea (and sprouted a fair few features along the way). I need to spend some more time finishing it up, but I find it pretty useful, so I imagine I'll follow up here once it's ready for public consumption. – phils Dec 10 '14 at 08:32
Great! I'll stick with the small script below for now, but would happily install something a bit more generic. – Mattias Bengtsson Dec 10 '14 at 08:35
Could someone elaborate on the downsides/risks of changing $HOME in this way? – David J. Jan 01 '15 at 18:35
15

According to Emac Manual - Appendix C Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation - Environment Variables - General Variables, HOME sets "The location of your files in the directory tree; used for expansion of file names starting with a tilde (~)." Changing HOME sounds like a recipe for trouble later when you want to quickly navigate or find files from your real home folder. – David J. Jan 01 '15 at 18:43
2

David James: Yes, that's a minor annoyance with this approach. As mentioned, you'll want to copy or symlink things which you need Emacs to see under HOME, and if you want to visit your real home directory then you need to use the absolute path (or you could add a symlink to that as well). – phils Jan 01 '15 at 23:28
3

You might also experiment with restoring the original HOME within Emacs during initialisation. I've not tried that, but it seems worth looking into. – phils Jan 01 '15 at 23:32
2

@phils: I tried what you suggest. – antonio Aug 07 '16 at 18:21

score 18 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 26 '15 at 10:34

You can symlink ~/.emacs.d, this is what I do

Try to keep my emacs configuration ~/.emacs.d oriented i.e. all emacs related config files should live in that folder
Then I have an ~/.emacs_configs folder where all config folders (basically a folder with a init.el and rest of the configuration) live, so my personal config folder will be ~/emacs_configs/iqbal, a prelude distribution will be in ~/emacs_configs/prelude
Very early in my personal emacs config I set the user-emacs-directory to the full path to my config using the following
```
(setq user-emacs-directory (file-truename "~/.emacs.d/"))
```
Then finally I symlink ~/.emacs.d to the configuration I actually want to use, eg. to use my configuration I will do ln -s ~/emacs_configs/iqbal .emacs.d. If you want to tryout some configuration just copy the configuration folder to ~/emacs_configs/whatever_name and change the symlink

The advantage of the 3rd step is that emacs started with my personal configuration can run unaffected even if I change the .emacs.d symlink while emacs it is running.

Another advantage is since the HOME is not changed external programs emacs might need to interact with are unaffected

Does this mean we can tweak all the separate emacs configs to (setq user-emacs-directory (file-truename "~/.emacs.d/")) so they can all run unaffected simultaneously? — user1011471, Jun 23 '16 at 17:40
In theory yes, but in practice there might be some libraries that hard-code the path to ~/.emacs.d rather than using user-emacs-directory. I have come across atleast one such library but unfortunately cannot remember the name. — Iqbal Ansari, Jun 24 '16 at 07:19

score 12 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:52

12

A configuration that doesn't change HOME or works with symlinks can be found in my answer https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/20508/934. With this configuration you can change the user-emacs-directory by setting an environment variable:

EMACS_USER_DIRECTORY=~/.emacsenv.d/spacemacs emacs

and this even works with the daemon.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:52

Community

1

answered Feb 24 '16 at 21:47

Uwe Koloska

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score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 05 '23 at 09:08

8

In Emacs 29+, set the user-emacs-directory with the flag --init-directory.

answered Sep 05 '23 at 09:08

Gavin

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Set this as the accepted answer now, since Emacs 29 has been out a while. For people on older versions the other comments can help with some workarounds! – Mattias Bengtsson Sep 20 '23 at 14:19
--init-directory seems to work with emacs 28.1 also. – Benjamin Berman Oct 31 '23 at 14:01
Don't work, you will have problems with the eln cache. – ritchie Jan 28 '24 at 01:31

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 31 '16 at 13:56

4

I found this neat solution from EmacsWiki:

emacs -q -l ~/my-init-file.el

(not exactly using a custom directory, but works nicely because you most likely have a single entry file anyway)

answered Mar 31 '16 at 13:56

phunehehe

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FYI, this is redundant with a comment by @Francesco from 2 years ago. – b-jazz Sep 14 '18 at 20:42

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 03 '16 at 22:36

4

The patch which allows you to specify .emacs.d location via `EMACS_USER_DIRECTORY' environment variable is available in https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=15539 but it's not yet merged.

answered Nov 03 '16 at 22:36

god

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1
8

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 30 '17 at 19:57

4

Set your var before loading your init file:

emacs -q --eval '(setq alt-conf t)' --load ~/.emacs

Then, in your init-file (in this case ~/.emacs):

(defvar alt-conf nil)

(if alt-conf
    (let ((default-directory "~/src/elisp-test/"))
      (normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path)
      (various-alt-config-stuff)
      (message "Alternate conf"))
  (message "Regular conf"))

answered Jul 30 '17 at 19:57

yPhil

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Very elegant, my favourite system, since everything remains in Emacs' domain, as it should. Thank you. – gsl Oct 17 '17 at 08:26

Mattias Bengtsson · Answer 9 · 2022-12-09T02:59:02.527

Expanding on the answer from @phils I made this little shell script (called testrun.sh) for testing out my new emacs config. This might make sense to do in other cases as well (for example when testing changes to your init.el that might break emacs).

#!/bin/bash
cd $(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")
[ -d .testrun ] || mkdir .testrun
cd .testrun
[ -h .emacs.d ] || ln -s .. .emacs.d
env HOME=pwd emacs
rm .emacs.d
cd ..
rm -rf .testrun

EDIT(2022-12-09):

I don't know how well the above works, haven't used it for a long time.
In Emacs 29 you can set user-emacs-directory using --init-directory.

From the Changelog:

* Startup Changes in Emacs 29.1

+++ ** Emacs now supports setting 'user-emacs-directory' via '--init-directory'.

In Emacs 29, --init-directory is the correct answer. – Gavin Sep 05 '23 at 09:05 — Gavin, Sep 05 '23 at 09:05

score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 24 '16 at 21:21

Here is a little script based on @Phil's answer and comment about changing the HOME environment variable, and then restoring it within Emacs.

#!/bin/bash

# Use it like this:
#   /path/to/this/script  EMACS_USER_DIRECTORY  [OTHER EMACS ARGS]

# You can never be too careful
set -e

# First arg = emacs user directory
#   (get a canonical, absolute path)
EMACS_USER_DIRECTORY=$(readlink -f "$1")
shift
if [ ! -d "${EMACS_USER_DIRECTORY}" ]; then
    echo "Non-existent directory: '${EMACS_USER_DIRECTORY}'"
    exit 1
fi

# Bootstrap directory
BOOTSTRAP=$(mktemp --directory --tmpdir .emacs-bootstrap.XXXXXX)
mkdir "${BOOTSTRAP}/.emacs.d"

# Bootstrap init file
cat >"${BOOTSTRAP}/.emacs.d/init.el" <<EOF
  ;; # Correctly set-up emacs-user-directory
  (setq user-emacs-directory "${EMACS_USER_DIRECTORY}/")
  (setq user-init-file (concat user-emacs-directory "init.el"))

  ;; # Reset the HOME environment variable
  (setenv "HOME" "${HOME}")

  ;; # Load the real init file and clean-up afterwards
  (unwind-protect (load user-init-file)
    (delete-directory "${BOOTSTRAP}" :recursive))
EOF

# Forward remaining arguments to emacs
exec env HOME="${BOOTSTRAP}" emacs "$@"

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Jan 02 '19 at 14:43

If the use case is sharing single emacs configuration ".emacs.d" directory across all users of a linux machine then this solution https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/4258/5488 would work in most cases, but in some cases emacs tries to write temporary files to the user-emacs-directory (such as .ido.last file). In such cases if the shared config directory has write permission to all users then it will work but may not be desired solution as each system user may not want to share the same directory to store temp files. In such case the following solution will be better option.

The common shared config file .emacs.d/init.el should start with

;; should come before calling package-initialize as it will populate
;; everything under common config "~/.emacs.d/elpa"
(setq user-init-file (or load-file-name (buffer-file-name)))
(setq package-user-dir (concat (file-name-directory user-init-file) "elpa"))

(package-initialize)

Make the shared config .emacs.d have read permission to all users(need not have write permissions)

another_user $ emacs -q --load /path/to/shared/config/.emacs.d/init.el

Every user will have his own "~/.emacs.d/" directory but only used to save the temporary files but the packages and other config are loaded from the shared config directory.

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Dec 21 '22 at 18:32

Chemacs works for me:

https://github.com/plexus/chemacs2

Installation is as simple as:

clone this git repo as your ~/.emacs.d
create a helper file called .emacs-profiles.el
start emacs like this:

<path-to-emacs> --with-profile 25.3

Note if you've hard-coded

"~/.emacs.d/..."

In your init.el universe like I did, you can just replace this with

(concat user-emacs-directory "...")

score 0 · Answer 13 · edited Jul 02 '20 at 11:01

All above solutions only work partially. Need combine top two solution together, which is:

set emacs user configures so that emacs will overwrite the default home .emacs.d directory

(setq user-init-file (or load-file-name (buffer-file-name)))
(setq user-emacs-directory (file-name-directory user-init-file))

change HOME PATH

alias es='HOME=~/Documents/ emacs -q --load "/Users/zhenlei/Documents/.emacs.d/init.el"'

ritchie · Answer 14 · 2024-03-17T17:39:46.290

-1

Old post but here is the answer: Most people recommend --init-directory which does not work because you will have conflicts with eln cache.

The solution is to symlink to to ~/.emacs.d or ~/.config/emacs

mv ~/.config/emacs ~/.config/emacs-current
cp -r ~/.config/emacs-current ~/.config/emacs-testing
ln -s ~/.config/emacs-testing ~/.config/emacs

Now you have two different configs up and running. One testing and one working.

If you want to switch configs remove the link. There is also an -f option you can use when using ln.

rm ~/.config/emacs
ln -s ~/.config/emacs-current ~/.config/emacs

edited Mar 17 '24 at 17:39

answered Jan 28 '24 at 01:51

ritchie

159
6

I just did this to test:
```
$ touch emacs-init-dir/init.el
$ /bin/emacs --init-directory emacs-init-dir/
$ # Install corfu from Elpa
$ ls emacs-init-dir/
auto-save-list  eln-cache  elpa  init.el
```
So I don't think what you say is correct.

This comment is totally unreadable because of https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/143306/newline-in-stackoverflow-comments btw
– Mattias Bengtsson Jan 28 '24 at 17:48
@MattiasBengtsson All you have to do sym link. I updated the answer. – ritchie Mar 17 '24 at 17:35

How to start emacs with a custom user-emacs-directory

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