Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: give us a hand with arch

[Miles Bader]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 03:50:05PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> it would seem emacs is broken in the way it edits files anyway, if you
> turn off backup files it works fine, if you don't things like ACLs and
> xattr are destroyed.

No, people are not going to `turn off backup files.'  Emacs can make backup
files by copying instead, if you want, but that loses several important
properties; the one that concerns _me_ the most (besides the added
inefficiency for large files), is that it doesn't snap hard links in that
case, and snapping hard-links is an important part of using hard-linked trees
(other important programs like patch also snap hard-links).

If xattr/acl proponents want their ideas to prosper, they're going to have to
offer good solutions for such issues, not mutter that programs like emacs are
`broken.'

One possibility would be to start standardizing a `copy file attributes'
interface that emacs could use when available instead of doing it in an
ad-hoc manner (maybe such an interface exists already, I don't know).

-Miles
-- 
Yo mama's so fat when she gets on an elevator it HAS to go down.