Re: How to disable auto save on Emacs 26.1

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-10-04, at 19:21, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:

> On 2018-10-04, at 14:55, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> If your concern is file system clutter, better leave auto-save alone.
>>> It's not going to clutter your file system (unless something else is
>>> going horribly wrong). As for backup, you can disable it or even teach
>>> it to use one directory for all backups (I have typically something
>>> beneath my ~/.emacs.d).
>>
>> Coming a bit late to the game... Adding to Tomás's point, if you want
>> to eliminate backup files, don't just disable it. Replace it with a
>> proper version control system of some sort. Think of backup files (I
>> generally use numeric backups to actually retain more than one old
>> copy - more clutter!) as a defense against shooting yourself in the
>> foot. A version control system does that, only better. [...]
>
> That is a very sound advice.  I'd like to point out, however, that the
> backup files (even the numbered ones) actually do have their place even
> in the presence of VCSs.  (Coincidentally, I have a blog post ready for
> publishing about exactly this issue, and I plan to post it online on
> Saturday.)  My use-case is a .env file, containing sensitive data (like
> passwords) the application I'm working on needs.  It must not be
> committed to a Git repo, but being able to look at one (or more)
> previous versions (as in, "what was the last version that wan't somehow
> broken") is sometimes quite valuable.

Just in case someone was interested, here's my blog post about Emacs and
backup copies of files it saves:
http://mbork.pl/2018-10-06_The_version-control_variable

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl