I have a
~/.emacs.d/init.el
which includes:-
(load-file "blabla.el")
blabla.el is in ~/.emacs.d/
When I start emacs I get this error:-
File is missing: Cannot open load file, No such file or directory, /root/blabla.el
I can use a full path to load the file, but do I need to? I thought emacs would look in emacs home directory (~/.emacs.d/) to find files. What have I missed?
load-file needs an absolute file name. If you don't give it an absolute path, it will have to generate one based on the current buffer's default-directory which isn't going to be what you want:
$ cd / $ emacs -Q --batch --eval "(load-file \"foo.el\")" Cannot open load file: No such file or directory, /foo.el $ cd /tmp $ emacs -Q --batch --eval "(load-file \"foo.el\")" Cannot open load file: No such file or directory, /tmp/foo.el I thought emacs would look in emacs home directory (~/.emacs.d/) to find files.
You don't want that either. Emacs will not look in ~/.emacs.d by default when loading lisp files (and see Warning message about load-path. or https://stackoverflow.com/q/24779041 regarding the fact that Emacs will complain if you try to make it do so).
In code, you would usually use either (load "foo") or (require 'foo) to load a foo.el[c] library with Emacs looking for it in the directories listed in the load-path variable.
I suggest reading:
(emacs)Lisp Libraries(elisp)How Programs Do Loadingrequire
load-file which hasn't changed its behaviour since I described it. load, so anything that you can do with the other functions you can also do with load (depending on the arguments you pass). There's no harm in using one of the other functions if its behaviour is actually what you want, but in lisp code you can always use load directly.