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I have some customisation in my ~/.emacs.d/init.el. My command line emacs can pick up the init.el as expected. However Aquamacs does not seem to read the file at all. Here is the buffer of the *message*

Loading prestart plugin files ...
... done.
Wrote /Users/antkong/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Packages/.nosearch
Shell: /bin/zsh
Loading /Users/antkong/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Recent Files.el (source)...done
Cleaning up the recentf list...done (0 removed)
22 environment variables imported from login shell (/bin/zsh).
Loading /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/aquamacs/3.2/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/aquamacs/edit-modes/auctex.el (source)...done
Loading plugins ...
Loading /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/aquamacs/3.2/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/aquamacs/site-start.el (source)...done
... done.
Loading `custom-file' failed.
Loading /Users/antkong/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el (source)...done
Mark set
one-buffer-one-frame-mode disabled.
Mark set [26 times]
Loading /Users/antkong/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/frame-positions.el (source)...done
file-error: (Opening directory no such file or directory /Users/antkong/Library/Logs/CrashReporter)
Mark set [5 times]
Aquamacs is based on GNU Emacs, a part of the GNU/Linux system. It is Free Software: you can improve and redistribute it under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, and D. Reitter. No Warranty.

Why Aqacmacs does not read the init.el file?

Anthony Kong
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3 Answers3

7

The following answer relates to current public release of Aquamacs available for download at http://aquamacs.org/download.shtml -- i.e., Aquamacs 3.2 GNU Emacs 24.4.51.2 (x86_64-apple-darwin14.0.0, NS apple-appkit-1343.14) of 2014-11-07 (Aquamacs-3.2) on watson.local

Aquamacs does indeed read the init.el that can be placed inside ~/.emacs.d/init.el. This can be verified by placing a simple message inside the init.el file and restarting Aquamacs:

(message "Hello-world -- this is my init.el file loading!")

Here is the *Messages* buffer output:

Loading prestart plugin files ...
... done.
Wrote /Users/HOME/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Packages/.nosearch
Shell: /bin/bash
Loading /Users/HOME/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Recent Files.el (source)...done
Cleaning up the recentf list...done (0 removed)
14 environment variables imported from login shell (/bin/bash).
Loading /Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/aquamacs/edit-modes/auctex.el (source)...done
Loading plugins ...
Loading /Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/aquamacs/site-start.el (source)...done
... done.
Loading `custom-file' failed.
Loading /Users/HOME/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el (source)...done
Hello-world -- this is my init.el file loading!
Mark set
one-buffer-one-frame-mode disabled.
Mark set [26 times]
Loading /Users/HOME/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/frame-positions.el (source)...done
Mark set [5 times]
Aquamacs is based on GNU Emacs, a part of the GNU/Linux system. It is Free Software: you can improve and redistribute it under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, and D. Reitter. No Warranty.
lawlist
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    Hmm. I just tried copying your message to a blank ~/.emacs.d/init.el and don't see it in *Messages*. I played with the mode of the file but that didn't help. I'm running Aquamacs 3.2 GNU Emacs 24.4.51.2 – ari gold Jul 14 '15 at 19:39
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    @ari gold -- The test in the answer above was performed using a brand spanking new installation of Emacs, without any user customization. The only thing that was added to perform the test was an `init.el` file at `~/.emacs.d/init.el` containing that one line of code `(message "Hello-world -- this is my init.el file loading!")`. If it doesn't work for you, then something in your configuration has most likely altered the default behavior. Try stripping everything down to the bear minimum and once you see that works out-of-the-box, you can start working towards tracking down the conflict. – lawlist Jul 14 '15 at 20:27
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    thanks & great idea. funnily enough I had to switch to [plain ol' emacs](http://emacsformacosx.com/) due to problems with aquamacs and ensime. – ari gold Jul 15 '15 at 20:51
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    I have a reasonably fresh install of Aquamacs 3.2 on Yosemite which also does not load my `init.el` out of the box. I do not have an `.emacs` file. I worked around this by adding `(load-file "~/.emacs.d/init.el")` to `~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el` which has a comment saying it *will* read `.emacs` ... but no mention of `init.el`. – tripleee Nov 06 '15 at 11:53
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    @tripleee -- It may be worthwhile for you to submit a bug report / issue on Github to David so that he is aware of it. – lawlist Nov 06 '15 at 15:00
  • Yeah this answer does not correspond with reality for many users, including me on a fairly fresh install. – Marcin Dec 16 '17 at 22:05
  • @Marcin -- it is possible that Aquamacs developers have since altered `startup.el`. *tripleee* has a suggestion/workaround a few comments above that can be used in the meantime which you may wish to try out -- i.e., `load-file` ... – lawlist Dec 16 '17 at 22:40
3

I had the problem that Aquamacs was reading my ~/.emacs.d/init.el file and then I changed the default font via the Aquamacs pull down menus. Once I saved the new options, Aquamacs stopped reading my ~/.emacs.d/init.el file. The solution I used was to put a soft link from ~/.emacs to ~/.emacs.d/init.el:

ln -s ~/.emacs.d/init.el ~/.emacs

There are other ways of doing this. For example, putting your initializations in

~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el

See https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AquamacsFAQ for more details about which files are loaded at startup.

DavidS
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  • I've come to the conclusion (for the 3rd time over the years) that Aquamacs is pointless. It doesn't load my customizations no matter what I try. – Sridhar Sarnobat Jul 27 '20 at 23:06
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I found that the only way to make customizations "stick" is to modify the customization file in "Aquamacs Emacs"

~/Library/Preferences/"AquaMacs Emacs"/customizations.el

For example, adding @lawlist's snippet

(message "Hello-world -- this is my init.el file loading!")

then produces the wanted result displayed in Messages:

Loading /Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/aquamacs/site-start.el (source)...done
... done.
Loading ~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/customizations.el (source)...
Hello-world -- this is my customizations.el file loading!
Loading ‘custom-file’ failed.
Loading ~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el (source)...done
one-buffer-one-frame-mode disabled.

All of this is for OS X 12.3.1 and Aquamacs 3.6 and good old bash.

Everything else such as

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa . "https://melpa.org/packages/") t)
(package-initialize)

or

;; Load company-coq when opening Coq files
(add-hook 'coq-mode-hook #'company-coq-mode)

starts working, too.

Hans Sieburg
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