Re: using libmagic in Emacs?

[Richard Stallman]

    PLEASE do not base Emacs infrastructure on external programs, unless
    they come with Emacs.  `file' is not available on every platform, and

libmagic isn't either.

    even on those it is, the quality and extent of its database is unclear
    and so cannot be relied upon.

On systems that have libmagic, isn't it the case that file uses libmagic?

    I really don't understand why linking against a simple free library is
    an issue, but if it is, we should find a different solution using some
    database internal to Emacs, as we did until now.

It shouldn't be a big deal.  Only a few specialized places should want
to run `file' on a file.