bug#70792: 30.0.50; [PATCH] Add Eshell support for expanding absolute file names within the current remote connection

[Michael Albinus via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

Hi,

>> How about a new "local" method? Then users would type
>> "/local::~/some-file.txt". That's more typing, but it's also more clear,
>> and doesn't repurpose an existing syntax used elsewhere in Emacs.
>
> Don't we already have that with "/localhost:" or somesuch?
>
>> If I go this route, I'm not sure whether it would be better to make
>> "local" a real file name handler available everywhere in Emacs despite
>> only being useful for Eshell, or if Eshell should just strip out the
>> "/local::" prefix before sending it to other parts of Emacs. I'm leaning
>> towards the former though, since the latter seems like a hack that could
>> have unforeseen consequences.

There is no public Tramp syntax for "/local:" or "/localhost:" or alike
in Tramp. Tramp uses internally, in `tramp-null-hop', the "local" method
in order to cache properties of the local machine. But this isn't
intended to be a public API.

> I'd like Michael's opinion on this, since we will be "invading" the
> Tramp methods space.

I'm kind of undecided. We might use this method internally for Eshell,
as "/local::/path/to/file", but it should be clear that it won't be an
official Tramp method. There might be problems, because all methods the
basic Tramp functions work for must be registered in `tramp-methods'.

And there might be other problems if a user changes the Tramp
syntax. The so-called simplified syntax doesn't use explicit method
strings, see (info "(tramp) Change file name syntax") .

Best regards, Michael.