Re: cvs emacs and (system-name)

[Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>]

>>>>> "Stefan" == Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>> I don't really have a domain I would put my machine in, and I think
>>> a reasonable number of people may fall into this category.  Emacs
>>> picking "localhost.localdomain" over the actual name of my machine
>>> still seems a bit odd.

Stefan> But it's kind of difficult for Emacs to guess which of the
Stefan> three names you put there is "my machine name".

My recollection is that traditionally the first host name is
considered the canonical one.  'man 5 hosts' backs me up on this :)

Stefan> Maybe "localhost" could be ruled out
Stefan> because it's sufficiently standard.  But "localhost.localdomain" is not
Stefan> particularly standard, AFAIK.

I don't recall seeing 'localhost.localdomain' back in the day -- but I
know *I* didn't put it there.  If Fedora does it then that is standard
enough for me; we're talking about thousands or millions of hosts
here.

Stefan> Maybe the answer is that Emacs should just disregard the
Stefan> "127.*.*.*" IP range.

I don't have any other entry in /etc/hosts.  My machine has no fixed
address and is not in a domain.  This, I believe, is extremely common
among laptop users.

Perhaps if only "localhost" and "localhost.localdomain" are found,
Emacs could fall back to gethostname(2) or uname(2).  With glibc the
latter appears to try to return the domain name as well.

Tom