Using customize-save-variable overwrites .emacs

[Shreevatsa R]

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In GNU Emacs 21.4.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
 of 2005-10-03 on trouble, modified by Debian
configured using `configure '--build=i486-linux-gnu' '--host=i486-linux-gnu' 
'--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' 
'--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' 
'--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' '--with-x=yes' 
'--with-x-toolkit=athena' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 
'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu''
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_IN
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

Hi,

My .emacs is a symbolic link to a file somewhere else. It appears that
invoking customize-save-variable (in my case it was invoked by a
library I was using) changes .emacs to make it a stand-alone file,
leaving the actual file untouched (resulting in two separate,
different, files).

Steps to reproduce:
1. Make .emacs a symbolic link to some other file.
2. Put something like
       (customize-save-variable 'useless-variable 1)
  in .emacs (or in some library that will be loaded).
3. Start Emacs.
4. Now .emacs is a separate file, instead of the symbolic link it was.

I'm on Ubuntu 6.06, but I have encountered the same behaviour on
Debian GNU/Linux.

Thanks,
Shreevatsa


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