Customizing built-in variables ​

Some users want to put all their customizations in use-package declarations, even for variables, hooks, and options that are always available, without loading any package.[1]

For that purpose, you can use the no-op ‘emacs’ package:

emacs-lisp
(use-package emacs
  :init
  (setq custom-file "~/.emacs.d/emacs-custom.el")
  (load custom-file)
  (setq frame-title-format "%b")
  :custom
  (use-short-answers t))

This declaration takes advantage of the fact that (featurep 'emacs) always returns true, and has no special meaning beyond that. It simply provides a way to organize your customizations, without loading anything.

  1. In other words, they are either preloaded in Emacs or defined in Emacs’s C sources. ↩︎