How can I prevent org-mode reading agenda files when started?

Question

My org-mode agenda files are on a remote machine, accessed via ssh using tramp. When org-mode starts it always reads this file, which is inconvenient as it makes opening any org file very slow. I would prefer for it to read the agenda files only when I actually look at the agenda. Is there a way to do this?

My .emacs currently sets the agenda location in this way:

  (setq org-agenda-files '("/-:somehost:somefile.org"))

Answer 1

I'd use use-package, treat org-agenda as separate package, defer its loading and declare org-agenda-files there. It should load the variable just before the agenda is loaded.

Alternatively I guess that you can exclude that file from your init file, and use add-to-list in org-agenda-mode-hookor any other convenient place you'll call before loading agenda-mode. This way will allow you to set conditional statements conveniently.

Answer 2

The solution I settled on was to remove the setting for org-agenda-files from my .emacs and instead to set org-agenda-files within some file local variables in the org-mode files that were actually relevant to the agenda. i.e. a block of code like this at the end of those files:

# Local Variables:
# eval: (setq org-agenda-files '("/-:somehost:somefile.org"))
# End: