Why isn't this variable being set although it is set in my .emacs?

Question

In my init.el file I have the following line (setq js2-basic-offset 2)

The last line in my .init.el file is

(add-hook 'after-init-hook
         (lambda ()
           (message "Welcome home %s" (user-login-name))))

When I start emacs and go to the *Messages* buffer, I see:

Loading c:/Users/user/.emacs.d/.mc-lists.el (source)...done
[yas] Prepared just-in-time loading of snippets successfully.
Welcome home user

However, when I do C-h v js2-basic-offset I get

js2-basic-offset is a variable defined in ‘js2-mode.el’.
Its value is 4

  This variable is an alias for ‘js-indent-level’.

Documentation:
Number of spaces for each indentation step in ‘js-mode’.

You can customize this variable

If I go to my init.el file and re-load it, the variable gets set to it's correct value of 2.

Does anybody have any solution for this issue?

Answer 1

  This variable is an alias for ‘js-indent-level’.

That's the clue. If you're running Emacs ≥25 then js2-mode defines js2-basic-offset as an alias of the variable js-indent-level. At the point where the variable is made an alias, any value that it had is forgotten. Only the value of the base variable (js-indent-level) matters.

If you set it later then the assignment dereferences the alias: once the alias is in place, (setq js2-basic-offset 2) is equivalent to (setq js-indent-level 2).

So set js-indent-level in addition to js2-basic-offset, or instead if you don't care about versions of Emacs older than 25.