Re: Risky local variable mechanism

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> (put 'myvar 'safe-local-variable t) in his .emacs.  There is, in my
> opinion, no need to make this any more convenient than that, neither
> the way you propose it nor the way Stefan proposes it.

The convenience I'm looking at is at least as much to be able to easily say
"yes, accept, and don't bother me about it again", as to be able to say "no,
don't touch that, and don't ask me ever again".

> There is no need to provide list variables defined with defcustom that
> trick the user into setting these list variables effectively with
> setq-default, which is definitely not what they should be doing.

The automatic/interactive part of what I propose would be things that are
only set by the user, so custom could be OK for them.

> I believe that it is very bad to ask each time _two_ questions to the
> user, first "do you want to set this variable to this value now" and
> then "is it safe to set this variable to any value whatsoever any time
> in the future?".

> Constantly repeating that second question each time
> the user visits the file, even though he may already have answered
> 1001 times no to it before, is effectively not only encouraging, but
> even pressuring, the reluctant user to finally say yes.

Agreed.  My suggestion tries to address both of those points.


        Stefan