GNU bug report logs - #79124
emacs -Q doesn't give me a clean slate

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Message #32 received at 79124 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: rpluim <at> gmail.com, 79124 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, rms <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#79124: emacs -Q doesn't give me a clean slate
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2025 22:05:31 -0700

On 2025-07-30 21:25, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> I'd prefer not to add another startup option.  Here, you didn't even
> know about -D, so what are the chances someone else will know about
> this new option?

The point is that one needs to use multiple options now, along with 
setting at least one environment variable at least part of the time, and 
it's easy to forget this stuff.

How about -QQ? That'd be easy to remember. The idea is to get a simple 
setup that yields reproducible results regardless of user.

> Would it be possible to make -D omit those few accesses that it
> doesn't now?

I assume it would be. I don't know how -D works, though.

> Well, "access nothing under $HOME" won't work with natively-compiled
> Emacs, because it needs to access files in ~/.emacs.c/eln-cache/.

? I just now ran natively-compiled Emacs with HOME set to a nonexistent 
directory, and it worked fine. I was using 'emacs -D -Q -nw' on Fedora 
42 x86-64.

> Not sure what you want to
> do about .terminfo.

I don't want to load it either, because it makes tests irreproducible. 
I'm sure this could be arranged somehow.

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