Need to load initial file every time when restart emacs

Question

I'm a newbie in Emacs who just is familiar with basic key bindings. I'm trying to learn more. I just learned to create initial file ~/.emacs.d/init.el and how to evaluate. But I find I need to load the initial file every time when I restart Emacs. I tried following things:

1. check there is no ~/.emacs or ~/emacs.el

2. go to /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp, add a code in subdris.el

   (add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/init.el/")
   

   And I checked that this file is in load-path.

However, I still need to reload the init file every time I restart Emacs. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Start Emacs and type C-hv user-init-file RET

That will tell you the init file which Emacs is actually loading.

C-hig (emacs)Init File RET will explain in more detail how Emacs establishes which file to load.

I would guess that your understanding of ~/ and Emacs' understanding of ~/ are different.

---

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/init.el/")

That's incorrect. load-path should be a list of directories, not files. It tells Emacs where to look for libraries. It does not tell Emacs where to find your init file, however; so load-path is not relevant to your question.

For clarity, ~/.emacs.d should be a directory, and ~/.emacs.d/init.el (if used) should be a regular file within that directory.