Init Directory (instead of a single file)

Keep all Emacs configuration in a separate directory that can be under version control with very short init.el change. Using init-dir is as simple as putting the following single line in the actual init.el file:

(load-init-dir)

Why init-dir?

There are already a few other init directory packages commonly used. The most popular ones are el-init and init-loader. What distinguishes init-dir from these other packages?

• No modifications to load-path. This means that you never need to worry about files in your init directory overriding built in libraries.
• No constraints put on how you write your init directory. Other packages require you to follow naming conventions or use provide / require.
• Integration testing recent Emacs versions while keeping support for older Emacs versions. I've been using this package myself since Emacs 21.3 across Mac, Windows, and Debian Linux and I understand the entire ecosystem can't update all at once.
• Avoid duplicating built-in Emacs functionality. For example in all elisp code you can use the form (when (eq system-type 'windows-nt) ...) to run code only on Windows so init-dir doesn't have any special "only runs on Windows" functionality.

Installation

If you are using MELPA, installing init-dir is as simple as M-x package-install RET init-dir. Additionally, on GNU Emacs 29 and higher, you can run M-x package-vc-install RET http://github.com/chaosemer/init-dir RET to install directly from source.

Init directory organizational suggestions

I find it easiest to organize my init directory by mode or package. So I have c.el for C related configuration (including C++, C#, etc.), elisp.el for Emacs Lisp related configuration, window.el for window management utilities, and so on. Each of these configuration files is independent from each other and self contained making it easy to add keep things organized.

For configurations that apply to all of Emacs, I find it best to put it in a single file named emacs.el. This is where global minor modes and global keybindings go.

Take advantage of the files being loaded in lexicographic order! Utility functions that should be globally available can be put in files named something like 00.required-libraries.el so it gets loaded first.

History

init-dir was originally written by Jared Finder (jared@finder.org) back in 2005 for GNU Emacs 21.3. My goals were:

• Keep my Emacs customizations under version control on a platform that didn't support symbolic links (Windows 2000). At the time GNU Emacs always loaded customizations from ~/.emacs.
• Keep global customizations cleanly separated from programming language specific customizations.
• Keep work customizations that depended on confidential tooling out of version control.

init-dir was publicly shared years later in 2023 based on encouragement from Eliza (https://github.com/elizagamedev) to share all the helpful Emacs utilities I have built.