I want to understand why an expression of the form

(load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t)

fails¹ when run as the last expression in my init (~/.emacs) file, but works fine if I evaluate it as soon as soon as Emacs starts.

How can I troubleshoot/debug this conundrum?

The only clue I have is that right before (load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t) is evaluated at the end of the loading of ~/.emacs, the variable custom-theme-load-path has the value

(custom-theme-load-directory t)

whereas after Emacs starts, it has the value

("/path/to/my-kewl-theme/" custom-theme-load-directory t)

I don't know what accounts for this difference. (This variable is not referred to at all by ~/.emacs, at least explicitly.) The variable custom-theme-load-directory has the value ~/.emacs.d throughout.

^{1error: Unable to find theme file for `my-kewl-theme`}

I want to understand why an expression of the form

(load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t)

fails¹ when run as the last expression in my init (~/.emacs) file, but works fine if I evaluate it as soon as soon as Emacs' startup is done.

How can I troubleshoot/debug this conundrum?

The only clue I have is that right before (load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t) is evaluated at the end of the loading of ~/.emacs, the variable custom-theme-load-path has the value

(custom-theme-load-directory t)

whereas after Emacs starts, it has the value

("/path/to/my-kewl-theme/" custom-theme-load-directory t)

I don't know what accounts for this difference. (This variable is not referred to at all by ~/.emacs, at least explicitly.) The variable custom-theme-load-directory has the value ~/.emacs.d throughout.

^{1error: Unable to find theme file for `my-kewl-theme`}

I want to understand why an expression of the form

(load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t)

fails when run as the last expression in my init (~/.emacs) file, but works fine if I evaluate it as soon as soon as Emacs starts.

How can I troubleshoot/debug this conundrum?

The only clue I have is that right before (load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t) is evaluated at the end of the loading of ~/.emacs, the variable custom-theme-load-path has the value

(custom-theme-load-directory t)

whereas after Emacs starts, it has the value

("/path/to/my-kewl-theme/" custom-theme-load-directory t)

I don't know what accounts for this difference. (This variable is not referred to at all by ~/.emacs, at least explicitly.) The variable custom-theme-load-directory has the value ~/.emacs.d throughout.

I want to understand why an expression of the form

(load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t)

fails¹ when run as the last expression in my init (~/.emacs) file, but works fine if I evaluate it as soon as soon as Emacs starts.

How can I troubleshoot/debug this conundrum?

The only clue I have is that right before (load-theme 'my-kewl-theme t) is evaluated at the end of the loading of ~/.emacs, the variable custom-theme-load-path has the value

(custom-theme-load-directory t)

whereas after Emacs starts, it has the value

("/path/to/my-kewl-theme/" custom-theme-load-directory t)

I don't know what accounts for this difference. (This variable is not referred to at all by ~/.emacs, at least explicitly.) The variable custom-theme-load-directory has the value ~/.emacs.d throughout.

^{1error: Unable to find theme file for `my-kewl-theme`}