Re: tramp-dropbox

[Michael Albinus]

Steve Youngs <address@hidden> writes:

> You would only ever be working on local files, so none of this would be
> needed.  All an emacs dropbox client would need to do is transfer to/from
> the server, and then _only_ if there was no native dropbox daemon
> running.
>
> The emacs client would need two modes of operation, one where there is a
> native daemon available, and one where there isn't.  In the case of the
> former (native daemon available) the client should get everything it
> needs from the daemon (which wouldn't be much).  All communication with
> the dropbox server would be handled by the daemon.

Yep, this shall be configrable. When a dropbox daemon is running, Emacs
doesn't need to push/pull.

> Actually, now that I think about it, an Emacs Dropbox client should be
> nothing more than a frontend to the native daemon running on localhost.
> So forget what I said about two modes of operation. :-)

Not only. There might be people who do not install a dropbox client, for
several reasons. The user doesn't like closed software, the machine is a
server which doesn't allow dropbox clients, the machine is a simple one
like a NAS which is not supported by dropbox, you name it ...

What if you want to access two different dropbox accounts in parallel,
for example in order to compare files? Don't know, whether ordinary
dropbox daemons support this.

>   > Other functions cannot be implemented for the dropbox protocol, like
>   > process-file and start-file-process; but those functions are not
>   > used in (S)XEmacs anyway.
>
> What do these functions (#'process-file, #'start-file-process) do?

They are the "remote counterparts" to `call-process' and
`start-process'. If `default-directory' is a local path, they call
`call-process' or `start-process', respectively. If it is a remote
directory, they work on the remote host. Very useful, I need it every
single day. 

Many packages support this meanwhile. Integration is easy, you just need
to replace the respective calls.

My preferred use case is "M-x find-grep-dired" on a remote directory ...

> Are they something we'd want to add to SXEmacs?

Yes :-)

> And why do I have this feeling I've asked you this before? :-)

Maybe because you did? Honestly, I don't remember I have discussed this
already with you, but this doesn't count. Never trust in my memories!

>   > The interesting decisions are around synchronization: Should all saved
>   > files be pushed to the server immediately? Should the server be checked
>   > for file changes before a local copy is opened?
>
> Nope.  Let the daemon take care of it all.

If there is a daemon running.

>   > Shall we support access to file revisions, via a new package
>   > vc-dropbox?
>
> This would be of limited value considering that revisions only go back
> 30 days on the free a/c's.  I'd be more inclined to create a git repo
> out of the local dropbox directory.

People might pay for longer availability. And if you have a git repo, it
would run only on one of your machines. What, if you change the file on
the other machine?

Best regards, Michael.