Re: order of search in load-path

[Tim X]

Baloff <washdc@wash.edu> writes:

> Hello
> 
> I learned that emacs searches directly in the order in which they
> appear in load-path, the first 2 items in my case is
> 
> load-path's value is 
> ("/usr/independ_packages/cedet-1.0pre3/common/icons"
> "/usr/independ_packages/cedet-1.0pre3/semantic/wisent"
> ...
> 
> isn't better that it searches its default Lisp directly first. and if
> so, is this variable customizable and where?
> I could (setq load-path (cons or append "some/path//lisp" load-path)) but this
> is the main thing I am trying to avoid, playing around with .emacs to
> move items around in load-path variable.
> 
> second point:
> I do not have any statement in my .emacs which adds/appends to the
> load-path. how did the current value happened to have those 2 items
> first in the list?
> 
> in that variable, I must have more than 20 paths, is that ok, or need
> to collect all whose ".el" in fewer dirs and load those only?
> 
> thanks 
> 
> >  LocalWords:  setq ok dirs

I think you are probably concerning yourself with things what don't
matter too much. I've often got a very long load path with lots of
different directories in it. The difference in efficiency you get with
re-arranging the order of the directory elements is unlikely to be
that noticable on modern hardware.

If the additions in your load-path were not added by you, they were
possibly added by the packages you have installed. A lot of this can
depend on the distribution you are running. For example, if your
running Debian, you will find there are two directories which contain
little snippets of elisp that sets up packages you have installed via
apt-get. These are /etc/emacs/site-start.d and
/etc/emacs21/site-start.d. It is common for the files in these
directories to add to the load-path. I know that RedHat use to do it
in a similar way last time I looked. 

Tim

-- 
Tim Cross
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