Re: [Lynx-dev] lynx configuration precedence

[Tim Chase]

On 2019-11-17 19:10, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> If a user has a lynx.cfg file in their home directory or in
> /home/.lynx will lynx automatically use their configuration file
> rather than the system's /etc/lynx.cfg file?

reading through the most recent source release, it looks like it
prefers in the following order the first readable file it finds:

1) if it was passed in via "-cfg=$FILENAME"

2) check if there's an environment variable named LYNX_CFG (or
"lynx_cfg") and use that if possible

3) if USE_PROGRAM_DIR is defined (which it isn't by default) at build
time, look for a "lynx.cfg" in the same directory as the lynx
executible.

4) look for the hard-coded LYNX_CFG_FILE file, as defined in
userdefs.h which is ".\lynx.cfg" on DOS and "/usr/local/lib/lynx.cfg"
on other platforms, assuming it hasn't been set by the ./configure or
Makefile build process.  In this process, according to the source,
you can specify at build-time that the LYNX_CFG_PATH is "~" to make
it a user-specific config file.

But otherwise, it doesn't automatically look for some lynx.cfg file
in the user's $HOME.

> If not, such a modification to lynx in some future version may be
> worth doing.

I've often wished for this and one of the first things I do when
setting up lynx is create an alias that uses `-cfg=$HOME/.lynx.cfg`

It doesn't look like it would be too hard to add a clause in that
chain of places-to-look that would try the home directory as well.

-tim