Auto generated code in the init file when updating packages

Question

Every time I use the package manager it puts auto generated code in the init.el file:

(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.
 '(ansi-color-faces-vector
   [default default default italic underline success warning error])
 ...
 )

(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.
 '(fringe ((t (:background "grey10"))))
 ...
 )

This doesn't seem to be doing anything critical and only messes up my interface and theme colors.

Is there a way to stop Custom generated code?

Or at least this specific code (I'm assuming it's coming from the packages I have installed).

Answer 1

Set option custom-file (to a different file from your init file).

Then Customize will use your custom-file instead of your init file.

This is good practice. It keeps your manually edited code apart from Customize's automatically managed code.

One minor caveat: Even though custom-file is a user option, set it in your init file instead of using Customize to manage it.

After you set custom-file in your init file, explicitly load it from your init file: (load-file custom-file).