Control where auto-save file are placed

Question

Trying to store all auto-save files in a single dir, i.e. ~/.emacs.d/autosave/ I have read the emacs manual on autosave I have read the emacs wiki on placing auto save file in one place

From this post, I learnt the dir name must end with a /. I have read many other posts on this site but none of them are of help.

I am only setting auto-save-file-name-transforms in one place. I have read countless posts where they just say place this in your init.el file:

(setq auto-save-file-name-transforms '((".*" "~/.emacs.d/autosave/" t)))

I check it with: buffer-auto-save-file-name And its always prints (for example for my init.el file):

/home/me/.emacs.d/#init.el#

I have seen so much flaky renderings with buffer-auto-save-file-name. I am not sure what is going on and I can't build something reliable after 2 days of searching.

Using Ubuntu 18.04 and Emacs 26.3

Answer 1

After 3 days I think this is suspect is what is going on: When the init.el file is loaded, its autosave filename is calculated and stored. The autosave transform is then modified by init.el, but its too late for init.el. So one can try everything and it just appears like its not changing, however it applies the transform to other files.