Re: backup method

[Miles Bader]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 21:25:45 +0100, Reiner Steib
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 27 2005, Kevin Rodgers wrote:
> > Which is why backup-by-copying-when-linked should be t by default.
> 
> ACK.  I never understood why it is nil by default.  Is there a strong
> reason for the current default?

See my reply to Kevin.

Basically it depends on what the hard-link is being used for as to
whether you want it to be broken on save or not.  One could argue that
the "native" unix behavior is to not break the link (since that's
e.g., what "cat > file" does), but a lot of people have become
accustomed to  using emacs' link breaking to make a sort of cheap COW
(copy-on-write) facility for hard-linked trees; other
developer-oriented utilities, most notably the "patch" command, have
the same behavior (breaking the link).

In any case, I think it's far too late to change the default.

-Miles
-- 
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.