Re: [PATCH] Disable VC when Emacs is noninteractive -batch

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Stallman writes:

 >     Because they change the behavior of Emacs depending on, for example,
 >     whether the working file differs from the repository file.
 > 
 > Only if you use VC commands, as far as I know.

I'm sorry, you're right.

A friend had a problem a couple years back but on review, I see the
script was loading her init file, which require'd vc-hooks.  So VC
hooks are not going to affect carefully written batch programs, as far
as I can see.

 >      > VC only does anything when you call VC functions explicitly.
 >      > Unless it has a bug.
 > 
 >     That's clearly not true, for some value of "does anything": VC
 >     installs hooks which are called for various file and buffer
 >     operations.

I'm thinking specifically of using `find-file' on what you think is a
non-existent file, and discovering that the buffer has non-empty
content because the file has been checked out of RCS.  I would not
call that "explicitly calling VC functions".