Test Alternative initialize scheme

[Tim Johnson]

On emacs GNU Emacs 25.3.2, ubuntu 16.04
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I use an .emacs.d directory with init.el. I'm contemplating making a
permanent move for this directory so that I can try out alternative 
configurations such as spacemacs. It might also reduce clutter at
the top-level of /home/$USER/ I can't tell from reading the
instructions for setting spacemacs that it would be as easy to put
the spacemacs configuration in a different location.

I have the following ~/.em_init.el as a bootstrapper
;; code follows
(setq user-emacs-directory "~/.emacs.d")
(load (concat user-emacs-directory "/" "init.el"))
;; code ends
and I then start emacs with the following bash script named my_emacs

#!/bin/bash
emacs -Q --load ~/.em_init.el

If this is deemed to be a workable solution, then I would then move
.emacs.d to ~/prj/emacs.d (as an example) and change the the path
for user-emacs-directory accordingly. Of course since I have added
to the clutter with .em_init.el at the top /home/$USER, that
bootstrapper could then also be moved.

(A review of my elisp code indicates that it would be a minimal
 effort to edit some hard-coded load paths, so portability is not a
 big issue.)

Comments? Caveats? 
thanks
-- 
Tim Johnson
http://www.akwebsoft.com, http://www.tj49.com