Cannot locate files in a `$EMACSDIR` that is recursively symlinked

[andresilva]

What did you expect to happen?

Until c05e615 it was possible to have all the files in user-emacs-dir be symlinks. This was really useful as a NixOS and home-manager user since all the files from the doom config would be symlinks to the nix store while still allowing doom to create its own files within those folders (for example for cache or profiles).

What actually happened?

It seems that doom is not loading symlinked files at all and therefore I get a bunch of undefined variables and functions errors on startup.

Describe your attempts to resolve the issue

No response

Steps to reproduce

Recursively symlink all the .config/emacs and .config/doom files into some other location. Try to load emacs.

home-manager config example:

home.file = {
  "${xdgConfigHome}/emacs" = {
    source = doom-emacs; # this repo
    recursive = true;
  };
  "${xdgConfigHome}/doom" = {
    source = "${config.files.configDir}/doom-emacs"; # my personal doom config
    recursive = true;
  };
};

System Information

https://pastebin.com/S0eyYNxy

[hlissner]

In the 3.0 release, Doom will move all its local files out of $EMACSDIR/.local to XDG folders (~/.config/{emacs,doom}, ~/.local/{share,state}/doom/, and ~/.cache/doom/), which should allow you to symlink the directories directly.

Until that happens, set the DOOMLOCALDIR envvar to a writable location in your Nix config.

Symlinking your $DOOMDIR, however, should be supported now and in the future.

I'll leave this open until 3.0 is released.

[andresilva]

Thanks! Yeah I changed my config to not recursively symlink the files, instead .config/{emacs,doom} are themselves symlinks to the nix store, and also setting DOOMLOCALDIR. That worked until the recent profile changes which try to write the cached profile loader to $EMACSDIR/profiles/init.X.elc, which is not writable. I haven't been able to work around that so far.

[hlissner]

With f99cf0c I've added a $DOOMPROFILELOADFILE envvar, which controls where to read and write the profile loader file (formerly $EMACSDIR/profiles/init.el, now defaults to $EMACSDIR/profiles/load.el).

Changing this will let you move it out of $EMACSDIR. E.g.

DOOMPROFILELOADFILE=~/.local/cache/profile-load.el