Fwd: tramp removes valid recentf files when a remote is unreachable

[Marc Herbert]

Hi,

I use both tramp and recentf constantly.

I use remote systems which are sometimes off, suspended or on a
different network and I don't always remember to wake them up /
connect to the VPN / etc. on every first attempt. When I try to open a
file on a system that is unreachable, all the files on that system get
cleared from the recentf list. This should be very easy to reproduce.
It is very time-consuming when there are many files buried below long
paths with many directories.

I configured recentf-auto-cleanup to "never" but tramp does not care
about that setting. I also tried various tramp settings but found none
that made a difference.

I found that this was added a few years ago because that could make
Emacs unusable:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/tramp-devel/2019-02/msg00005.html
That does not seem to be the case anymore, well not for me anyway. Not
arguing about the default behavior I think it should be at least
possible to customize it and turn it off somewhere. Is it?

tramp-maybe-open-connection calls tramp-cleanup-connection that calls
the tramp-recentf-cleanup hook that calls recentf-cleanup.
Eventually I commented out the tramp->recentf hook entirely and that
seems to work well but carrying custom patches is of course not
sustainable and solves the problem just for me. Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance!

Marc

PS: I'm not subscribed to this list.