bug#12507: Have I mentioned how much I hate Debbugs?

[Drew Adams]

> So, immediately after I mis-closed this report, I realized 
> what happened and ever since then I've been trying to reopen it.
> 
> First I emailed "12507-open@".  Then I tried "12507-reopen@".  Maybe
> those emails are stuck in the pipe somewhere, or maybe those weren't
> valid ways to issue the command to reopen.

I don't think those are valid ways.

> In any case, now I'm reduced to sending this mail and praying that
> it goes through, since unlike every other bug tracker created
> since 1852 debbugs does not have a way to manipulate bugs via the
> web browser.

;-)

I just sent a reopen message, which looks like it worked.

I too know little about Debbugs.  For this, all you need to do is to send a
message to 'control@debbugs.gnu.org' with this in the message body (without
quotes): "reopen 12507".


> In any case:
> This bug is too complex to solve by the Oct. 1st freeze, sorry.

It's not complex, IMO, but it definitely won't be fixed by Oct 1!  I think we
need to wait for Stefan to weigh in on the question, for one thing.

> Just reading & comprehending the conversation takes twenty minutes
> now.  My preference would be to remove the `bookmark-version-control'
> variable entirely, since probably so few people use it and it's now a 
> bug source.

I disagree with that, but I can keep a local version if you decide to do that.

What I would prefer is a general solution, along the lines I suggested (in my
mail of 9/28): extend the general `version-control' to let users specify backup
for particular files.  I proposed adding an option like this, as one way to do
that:

(defcustom version-control-overrides ()
  "Control the use of version numbers for backing up specific files.
Each entry is of the form (REGEXP-OR-VARIABLE . VALUE), where:
REGEXP-OR-VARIABLE is a regexp matching file names or the name of a
 file name-valued variable.
VALUE has the same meaning as the value of option `version-control,
 but affects only the files whose names match REGEXP."
  :type '(repeat (cons :tag "File & when"
                  (choice
                   (regexp   :tag "File-name regexp")
                   (variable :tag "File-name variable"))
                  (choice
                   (const :tag "Never"       never)
                   (const :tag "If existing" nil)
                   (other :tag "Always"      t))))
  :group 'backup :group 'vc)

Then, to handle the file that is the value of variable `bookmark-file' you would
just add an entry like this: (bookmark-file . t).

> However, maybe it's important enough to keep, in which case 
> we probably need to fix `write-region' to DTRT with backups,
> or at least have some kind of `write-region-make-backups'
> variable we can dynamically bind.
> 
> I don't want to revert to using `write-file'.  We switched *away* from
> `write-file' for a reason.  Going back will probably mean a regression
> of some sort.

We could do what I suggested in my message of 9/29:

d> 3. Provide for optional backups, but if the user chooses not
d>    to back up, then do not visit the file.
d>
d> With #3, the user would pay the price that Stefan mentions for
d> visiting the file only when s?he chooses backup.

I based that on my understanding (still asking the question though, since I'm
not sure) that you cannot back up the file unless you visit it.  Stefan's
objection, and the reason we moved away from `write-file', is that a user might
not want to visit the file, since that has some additional effects (e.g. asking
for confirmation if some other process modified the file).

But those effects are anyway desirable, IF you want to back up the file.  So it
seems to me that what we want is to either (a) visit the file and do
`save-buffer' or `write-file or equivalent IF the option value says to back up
the file, or (b) do what we do not IF NOT.

In any case, it sounds like we have all agreed at least on the need of a way for
a user to say whether or not s?he wants backups.  `bookmark-version-control'
does not do that - it controls only whether to use ordinary backups or numeric
backups.  So I think the first step is to add an option so that a user can
express that choice.