On Wed, 18 Dec 2019, 11:10 Fraga, Eric, <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 18 Dec 2019 at 11:02, Sharon Kimble wrote:
> > I've tried using a symlink to the file held in another directory, but
> > when I restarted emacs the symlink wasn't followed and it created a new
> > abbrev_def file from somewhere, I don't know where.
>
> This is strange.  I have my .abbrev_defs symlinked to elsewhere and it
> works just fine.  I've been doing this for years, probably from emacs
> v22 onwards (but that's just a guess).
>
> To answer your original question, I use version control (e.g. src or
> git) to manage that file along with other dotfiles.
>

Likewise; I symlink from ~/.emacs to the real .emacs in my git-managed
repo, and that has been working well for me.

Best wishes,
    Neil