emacs not picking up my init.el file on windows

Question

I have my emacs.d folder located at:

C:\Users\<loggedin_user>\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d

In this folder, I have my init.el file but it is not being picked up by emacs.

Is there another step I am missing, do I need to set an environment variable or something?

When I enter C-x d ~/ RET I end up at

C:\Users\<loggedin_user>\AppData\Roaming\

If I move the init.el file there, it is still not picked up. I have a deliberate error in the file that is not causing emacs to crash when it is opened.

Answer 1

Most likely you have an old ~/.emacs file somewhere else which Emacs ends up using in preference to the other one.

You probably want to check the value of user-init-file which will tell you which file Emacs ended up using as "the ~/.emacs file".

I suggest you report this as a bug, requesting that when several files are found as possible init file, Emacs should not just pick the first and ignore the others but should at least emit a warning about the fact that it ignored the others.