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TRAMP VC optimization fails: non-TRAMP filenames handled incorrectly in


From: Daniel Pittman
Subject: TRAMP VC optimization fails: non-TRAMP filenames handled incorrectly in async operations.
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2019 15:38:23 +0000

G'day.  In HEAD, tramp-sh has some optimizations in place for the `vc-registered` operation, intended to minimize the number of round trips.  Sadly, these don't seem to be safe in a single threaded Emacs world, and even less safe in a threaded one.

The function `tramp-sh-handle-vc-registered` attempts to optimize the process by emplacing a separate file-name-handler, running the operation(s), then performing a single remote call to obtain all the data.

This is an optimization, no doubt, and would be great ... except that it assumes a synchronous operation where no other code can run while the new file handler is in effect.  This is, sadly, not the case.

The observable symptom is that we hit this error throw in `tramp-dissect-file-name`:
(tramp-user-error nil "Not a Tramp file name: \"%s\"" name)

The most common place I observed this was during startup, when it complained that the `nsm-settings-file`, which is the default value in my case, was not a TRAMP filename.  It also happens for expanding `~`, and a handful of other cases, when I was reverting tramp buffers, etc.

On debugging I discovered that the problems were springing from calls something akin to this:
(let ((default-directory "/ssh:address@hidden:/tmp"))
  (expand-file-name "~" default-directory))

That uses, via `tramp-vc-file-name-handler`, `tramp-file-name-for-operation`, which in the case of `expand-file-name` returns "~".  I believe that is correct, but if not, that may be the root cause of the problem.

In any case, that is then passed to `tramp-dissect-file-name` by `tramp-vc-file-name-handler`, and (definitely correctly) triggers the error that a non-tramp filename is being parsed.

This triggered from an async lisp callback firing, while the current buffer happened to be on tramp.  The previously mentioned `nsm-settings-file` is referenced when an async update of ELPA package lists – triggered in my init.el file – is running, and desktop.el is busy reloading my buffers, including the ones via tramp.

So, basically, the optimization would work great if only we never called any lisp code asynchronously to it – but we do, and that is probably made more visible when I'm using an ssh-backed method to talk to a machine ~ 250ms away from my Emacs instance than when it is ~ 25ms away.  A bigger race, where TRAMP is waiting for data from an external process, and so other external processes can also fire.

I don't have a patch, but I'll see if I can figure out how to improve this.  I fear the situation is impossible, however, and that this attempt to improve the performance of `vc-registered` is doomed to failure unless an async protocol is defined to replace the current, synchronous, version.

I also cannot say if the problem extends beyond `expand-file-name`, but it probably hits at minimum anything else that canonicalizes paths.

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