relative backup-directory-alist backup directories are not created correctly via ange-ftp

[christopher.moore@orange.co.uk]

In GNU Emacs 21.2.1 (i386-msvc-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2002-03-19 on buffy
configured using `configure --with-msvc (12.00)'
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: ENG
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t


I have  backup-directory-alist set like this in my .emacs:

   (custom-set-variables
     ...
    '(backup-directory-alist (quote (("." . "Backup"))))
    ...)

When editing files locally, it automatically creates a directory called 'Backup'
wherever I edit files and all backup files go into that local Backup directory.

However, when I am editing files remotely, using ange-ftp, the directory isn't
created.

The reason for this is that the call to make-directory in files.el's
make-backup-file-name-1 function looks like this:
         (make-directory backup-directory 'parents)
where backup-directory is just the string "Backup" (a relative path name, not an
absolute one).

As a result, backup-directory doesn't know that it should use any ange-ftp magic
(in particular, make-directory's call to (find-file-name-handler dir
'make-directory) returns nil).

I found that replacing this line in files.el's definition of
make-backup-file-name-1():

------------------------------------
         (make-directory backup-directory 'parents)
------------------------------------

with these 5 lines:

------------------------------------
         (make-directory
          (if (file-name-absolute-p backup-directory)
           backup-directory
            (expand-file-name backup-directory (file-name-directory file)))
          'parents)
------------------------------------

makes the problem go away, since now we are passing an absolute path to
make-directory, including the /user@host:/ prefix, so it can know that it should
use ange-ftp to make the directory.

You might well find a *nice* fix...

Chris.




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