Re: desktop.el: autosave?

[Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2007, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>>> likely to use this feature. Furthermore those concerned about power usage
>>> and disk spin-up only have to worry about the same Emacs feature
>>> (auto-save-hook), and not add another hook or function to their list of
>>> things to tweak.
>
> BTW, how 'bout optimizing disk writes like savehist does: only save the
> new desktop file if it's different from the previous one.  That doesn't
> save you from generating the new file's content in a buffer, of course,
> but still.

That sounds like a good idea. I think we can now collect the changes that 
need to be made:

1. A customizable preference, desktop-auto-save, which indicates whether 
desktop-save-in-desktop-dir should be added to auto-save-hook or not. Is the 
easiest way to do this to add a private function that desktop mode always 
adds to auto-save-hook and then have that private function test a boolean 
which is itself the customizable preference when it runs, to see whether to 
proceed or not?

2. Change desktop-save-in-desktop-dir so that it only prompts for a 
directory if it is called interactively. The normal way seems to be to add 
an optional argument as described in the help for interactive-p.

3. Change desktop-save-in-desktop-dir to be like savehist-mode, only 
actually writing the file when the history has changed since the last time.

Does that sounds about right?

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