Why does eval-buffer on init.el kill a buffer?

Question

I tried running M-x eval-buffer to reload my init.el, which looks like this (point was at top, most irrelevant commented-out sections trimmed):

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c l") #'org-store-link)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c a") #'org-agenda)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c c") #'org-capture)

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/") t)
(package-initialize)
;; Bootstrap 'use-package'
(unless (package-installed-p 'use-package)
        (package-refresh-contents)
        (package-install 'use-package))
(eval-when-compile (require 'use-package))

;; Use use-package to download and load theme
(use-package dracula-theme
  :ensure t
  :config (load-theme 'dracula t))

(add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook 'paredit-mode)

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook #'visual-fill-column-mode)

(desktop-change-dir "~/.emacs.d/desktop")
(desktop-save-mode 1)

(eval-after-load 'org (define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-M-i") 'pcomplete))

; This gets syntax-highlighted strangely as though the single quotes stop the comments
;;   ;; Rebind the 'd' key in org-agenda (default: `org-agenda-day-view').

;; Refresh org-agenda after rescheduling a task.
(defun org-agenda-refresh ()
  "Refresh all `org-agenda' buffers."
  (dolist (buffer (buffer-list))
    (with-current-buffer buffer
      (when (derived-mode-p 'org-agenda-mode)
        (org-agenda-maybe-redo)))))

(defadvice org-schedule (after refresh-agenda activate)
  "Refresh org-agenda."
  (org-agenda-refresh))

(setq org-read-date-prefer-future 'time)

(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.
 '(fill-column 90)
 '(git-commit-summary-max-length 50)
 '(org-agenda-custom-commands
   '(("n" "Agenda and my (or unassigned) TODOs"
      ((agenda "" nil)
       (tags-todo "<irrelevant search string>" nil))
      nil)))
 '(org-agenda-files '("~/org/agenda.org"))
 '(org-log-into-drawer t)
 '(package-selected-packages
   '(visual-fill-column paredit flycheck-clj-kondo org-recur cider magit use-package dracula-theme))
 '(save-place-mode t)
 '(visual-fill-column-enable-sensible-window-split nil))
(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.
 )

However, I got a prompt asking if I really wanted to kill the modified init.el buffer; when I answered no, it had to recreate the buffer by "reading killed buffer" (presumably from the kill ring). When I tried it again, it instead picked a different modified buffer (an Org file) to kill and recreate when I answered no again.

Why is it even killing any buffers at all? How am I actually supposed to just do a simple reload of minor changes, if eval-buffer is so wildly dangerous?

@whitetrillium suggested setting a breakpoint. Call stack from eval-buffer up looks like this:

* kill-buffer(#<buffer  *temp*>)
  #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode -0x1c1d6e334ba0c627>)()
  package-load-descriptor("/Users/ntuggy/.emacs.d/elpa/bind-key-20220910.2157")
  package-load-all-descriptors()
  package-initialize()
  eval-buffer()  ; Reading at buffer position 255

Nothing in the elisp source for that package explains why kill-buffer is getting called.

Answer 1

The problematic line is this:

(desktop-change-dir "~/.emacs.d/desktop")

This forces a reload of buffers because it saves the desktop and reloads it, even though all that's desired is to set the default path. For that, this correctly loads and saves the desktop without killing any buffers:

(setq desktop-path (list "~/.emacs.d/desktop"))