spacemacs overwrites all customizations on every startup

[henrycrutcher]

To repro:
use M-x customize-variable to set a variable
restart emacs
notice changes are gone

[syl20bnr]

These customizations should go at the end of your .spacemacs file. Can you verify that emacs correctly append your settings there ?

[syl20bnr]

@henrycrutcher I see the problem, I see what I can do to fix this.

[CestDiego]

^ this works now?

[syl20bnr]

After reading again the issue I'm not sure I understood it well. Is the changes gone (not in the dotfile anymore) or is the changes overwritten ?

[henrycrutcher]

I'll test it out and see how it goes -- Thanks!!!!

[henrycrutcher]

I tried to customize smooth-scroll-margin to change the margin from 5 to 1, and customize said it was changed outside customize, and when I customized it, it worked for that session, but restarting emacs and customizing it again, the value was back to 5, as if I had never been there. If there any way to figure out where the change is happening?

@syl20bnr the changes do get saved in the .spacemacs -- they just get overridden after the customization is loaded -- here's the bottom of my .spacemacs

;; Do not write anything past this comment. This is where Emacs will
;; auto-generate custom variable definitions.
(custom-set-variables
;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
'(ac-ispell-requires 4)
'(ahs-case-fold-search nil)
'(ahs-default-range (quote ahs-range-whole-buffer))
'(ahs-idle-interval 0.25)
'(ahs-idle-timer 0 t)
'(ahs-inhibit-face-list nil)
'(ring-bell-function (quote ignore) t)
'(smooth-scroll-margin 1))
(custom-set-faces
;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
)

[syl20bnr]

Thanks for the explanations. This is a flaw in the way spacemacs loads.
As a work around for now you can (setq smooth-scroll-margin 1) in your dotspacemacs/config instead.

[henrycrutcher]

Thanks!!!

[cmccloud]

@syl20bnr Is there any interest in a fix for this?

I was thinking that, rather than have spacemacs/config.el set the custom file, its location could be added as one of the default init variables in the dotspacemacs/init function.

The call to load the custom file could then be moved to either init.el or into spacemacs/setup-startup-hook.

[TheBB]

#3470 probably fixes this.

[calopter]

Is this the same issue? When I open the customize GUI via the major mode it says State: something in this group has been changed outside customize.

I can see the changes I had made reflected in my .spacemacs but they do not take effect.

[junebash]

I am now having this same issue where every time I start Emacs, all settings in my .spacemacs file in the "custom-set variables" section are being removed.

[9mm]

Same here, confused where I should put it

[dbmikus]

I was having this issue because I was previously defining the custom-file in dotspacemacs/user-init and then loading it in dotspacemacs/user-config. I think I was doing this because of some weird interaction with layers before, but I think that problem is gone (or maybe it never existed)?

Now, I configure and then load the file in dotspacemacs/user-init. I was having the issue where my custom.el file was being overwritten whenever I updated packages and it went to write out the package-selected-packages variable. Putting both the custom file definition and loading in dotspacemacs/user-init appears to solve this problem.

Because of intricacy around how Spacemacs package upgrade, loading, and selection is defined, I think it might be helpful to make the custom-file definable through a Spacemacs variable in dotspacemacs/init.

[uberjay]

I've been having this problem off-and-on for a while now, although I haven't identified when it occurs. I've been running the develop branch for ~6 months now, and update my spacemacs repo/packages on a semi-regular basis. The variables I've customized (using the emacs customize facility) get blown away... sometimes, but not always when I restart emacs.

I'm running:

GNU Emacs 26.1 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin17.5.0, Carbon Version 158 AppKit 1561.4) of 2018-06-14

I don't have any special configuration regarding a custom-file -- it's stored at the end of my ~/.spacemacs.d/init.el file.

EDIT: As a random tidbit, ~/.spacemacs.d is a symlink to a version-controlled directory. Relevant? Perhaps!

[dbmikus]

@uberjay: you should see if updating packages and restarting Emacs is the cause. If so, look at my post above yours and try moving the custom file configuration code in dotspacemacs/user-init.

[uberjay]

Thanks, that does appear to have fixed it. I mistakenly moved the whole dotspacemacs/emacs-custom-settings wrapper bits, which ended up causing duplicate custom-set-variables entries to get written out. After thinking about it, and realizing that I put the explicit load of custom settings in my user-init function (duh! :), I removed the dotspacemacs bits, and everything seems to be happy again.

Thanks for the tip!

[EwanDawson]

This issue definitely isn't fixed. I set a bunch of customizations using customize, which then appeared in dotspacemacs/emacs-custom-settings, in the call to custom-set-variables. These settings persisted for a while. However, I just restarted emacs, and these customizations have been lost.
(Running Spacemacs 0.300.0@25.3.1)

[paulodiniz]

Same here. I have been having problems switching themes as for the background seemed to always stay white.

The problem was the custom-set-faces which always set the background to #FFFFFF