bug#62817: Extension request: Must-Recover flag for files with auto-save information

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Johann Höchtl <johann.hoechtl@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2023 18:42:15 +0200
> 
> Currently when Emacs crashes, it keeps a list of affected files in 
> auto-save-list. Alternatively when
> opening a file where auto-save information is more current than the actual 
> file, emacs will display a
> message in the status buffer and keep the entry in messages.
> 
> However, for novice users, this helpful hint can be easily missed, eg. if a 
> verbose mode prints
> messages in the status buffer, like lsp-modes comes to mind. In such a case 
> the hint that a more
> recent autosave file exists is displayed and will get quickly replaced with 
> other messages. If the user is
> not aware of recover-this-file, he will likely overwrite more recent 
> auto-save information with
> subsequent edits.
> 
> I propose that this is bad behaviour and a configuration exists which halts 
> any further processing until
> the user actively finishes what a manual recover-this-file would offer him to 
> do. This feature makes
> sense, especially as of Emacs 29? auto-save-files can be reliably deleted by 
> Emacs itself.

I don't think delaying initialization is a good idea.  Instead, how
about using the warnings facility for showing these messages?  See the
"Warnings" node in the ELisp Reference manual for more details.  In
particular, we have a "delayed warnings" feature, which allows to
delay the actual display of the warnings till after the running
command finishes.

Would you like to work on a patch along these lines?