Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bbn!jr@bbn.com
From: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: runtime hook
Message-ID: <40104@bbn.COM>
Date: 17 May 89 21:31:21 GMT
References: <8905171912.AA06544@dsys.icst.nbs.gov>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation, Cambridge MA
Lines: 38
In-reply-to: rbj@dsys.icst.nbs.GOV (Root Boy Jim)

In article <8905171912.AA06544@dsys.icst.nbs.gov>, rbj@dsys (Root Boy Jim) writes:
>? From: odi!benson@uunet.uu.net  (Benson Margulies)
>
>? Is there a hook (18.53-wise) that can be set in site-init.el to cause a function
>? to run when emacs is started up?
>
>Yes. It's called `load'.

I don't think this gets at what Benson is asking.  site-init.el can
cause packages to be put into shareable pure lisp space, and can
initialize some lisp variables, but it can't leave something around to
be run when emacs is started.

The file $EMACS/lisp/default.el, if it exists, is loaded at startup
for any user without a .emacs file.  This may help.

Another way to get this effect is to have the installed `emacs'
program (/usr/local/bin/emacs or whatever) be a shellscript that does
soemthing like:

  exec /usr/local/emacs/src/xemacs -f special-startup-function $*

I do a similar thing (actually, with a csh alias) to get an elc
command (emacs-lisp compiler) so as to avoid burdening my persistent
emacs with the byte-compiler library.

To modify how emacs starts up, look at the code in lisp/startup.el.
It's pretty obvious what's going on there.  You can probably modify it
to look for a (say) default-entry-function symbol and call that at
more or less the same place where .emacs or default.el is loaded.  I
suppose allow .emacs to override it through another config variable or
by setting it to nil.
--


/jr
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C'mon big money!