From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Tramp: how to handle make-symbolic-link? Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:32:38 -0400 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <200206241939.g5OJdRF26200@aztec.santafe.edu> <200206242012.g5OKCV904075@rum.cs.yale.edu> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1025050340 11423 127.0.0.1 (26 Jun 2002 00:12:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 00:12:20 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE, emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17N0Q0-0002y8-00 for ; Wed, 26 Jun 2002 02:12:20 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 17N0Rr-0008Fj-00 for ; Wed, 26 Jun 2002 02:14:15 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17Mzop-0000DI-00; Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:33:55 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17Mzna-0008SY-00; Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:32:38 -0400 Original-To: monnier+gnu/emacs@rum.cs.yale.edu In-Reply-To: <200206242012.g5OKCV904075@rum.cs.yale.edu> (monnier+gnu/emacs@rum.cs.yale.edu) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:5210 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:5210 > Assuming that symlinks in the remote file system can only point to > that same remote file system, the former request is possible, and the > latter should get an error because there is no way to make a link to > the local machine's disk. make-symbolic-link should not prevent you from creating to a link to a file that doesn't exist. Especially since you can pretty much never tell whether the file will ever exist or not. I agree, but that is not the issue here. Either way, it will be possible to make links to files that don't exist. The issue is about links that would appear to point to another machine. Symbolic links are interpreted by the OS, and it does not understand Emacs remote file names. So a link can only point to a file on the same machine. In Emacs, that link target is a remote file name. It always points to a remote file. It seems that the consistent scheme is that you specify the link target using a remote file on the same remote machine, and the mechanism to create the link deletes the remote prefix before really creating the link. That's the consistent thing for absolute link targets. A relative link target is another matter. Since that is relative to the directory which contains the link, it should not contain a remote prefix, and you would not try to remove any remote prefix.