Subject: emacs -Q doesn't give me a clean slate

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 16:59:23 -0700

Over the years Emacs has come slurp more and more files from the user's 
home directory, which is fine except that 'emacs -Q' is supposed to 
suppress this sort of thing, partly to help debugging so that one can 
easily have a clean Emacs to test with.

Unfortunately, nowadays 'emacs -Q' now has some questionable accesses to 
configuration files or caches. I did an "cd /tmp" followed by an "strace 
emacs -Q -nw" using Emacs master (on Fedora 42) where I immediately 
typed C-x C-c to exit, and found that Emacs accessed or attempted to 
access the following files under my home directory. -Q should disable 
these accesses; or if -Q is not the right way to do that, there should 
be an easy way to tell Emacs "start with a clean slate; don't access any 
of my startup configuration or cache or whatever".

.abbrev_defs
.emacs.d
.emacs.d/
.emacs.d/./
.emacs.d/abbrev_defs
.emacs.d/auto-save-list/.saves-67042-penguin.cs.ucla.edu~
.emacs.d/eln-cache/
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/ansi-color-75eac800-a71f27cf.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/ansi-osc-b447f6a8-8febe2b9.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/byte-opt-9c5f25f5-7cc5ddb7.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/bytecomp-12882072-8edd60a1.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/cl-lib-8b938900-a571fbf6.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/cl-loaddefs-310c8015-a1d7aa30.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/comint-faef15ad-bfa1fb2f.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/comp-common-6e17f702-933f2808.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/comp-run-a15747ee-efc134fc.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/compile-91e1c2a0-9cbeba37.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/gv-e0cf7478-71e25e63.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/ring-bff0b981-036e8192.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/rx-627d8c83-9aae5e83.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/subr-x-02dfef32-97626417.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/text-property-search-db1383f6-03526671.eln
.emacs.d/eln-cache/31.0.50-6ea53a16/time-date-40951a48-4999dc2b.eln
.terminfo