bug#36729: 27.0.50; Unclear total in directory listing

[Mattias Engdegård]

7 okt. 2020 kl. 09.50 skrev Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:

> I no longer understand what we are trying to solve here.

A bit lost here myself, but it seems that no real progress has been made and 
that the original problem (how to display a meaningful 'total' value in dired) 
is still at hand.

However given the apparent constraints (running an external 'ls' binary with 
unclear semantics; uncountable platform variations; user-settable 'ls' 
switches; sensitivity to environment variables; localised output; &c &c) I 
don't think it can be solved in any reasonable way. I therefore propose closing 
the bug as 'wontfix'.
Sorry about not thinking it through before reporting it.