Re: Emacs unconditionally loads tramp.el

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 07:18:55 -0700
> 
> Sounds like a good argument for keeping ange-ftp as the Emacs default, until
> tramp supports Windows (and other platforms, if appropriate) seamlessly.
> That was my point.

But Tramp does work on Windows, at least for me, with plink as the SSH
client.  Unless others say that plink, too, has problems, which aren't
seen on Posix platforms, I don't see why we should advise Windows
users to use a different setup.

(Also note that ange-ftp is now Tramp's back end, and so fetching by
FTP should work as well as it did in previous versions.  We are not
discussing FTP methods, we are discussing SSH, which is not supported
by ange-ftp at all, and so there's no alternative to Tramp there.)

>     I doubt that many Windows users even consider a prospect of accessing
>     remote files.
> 
> I think you are wrong about Windows users these days (and perhaps more wrong
> tomorrow). Did you read the part about developers at large companies having
> a Windows box in their cubicle and using remote (who knows where?) GNU/Linux
> boxes for their development?

My day job is with a large company, where almost all code developers
use Windows as their desktop OS and either Windows or GNU/Linux as the
target OS.  So I'm speaking from experience, not from theory.

> Tramp is an important feature to fix, especially if it is to be the default.

Please try plink when you have time.  It works quite well for me.

(And generally PuTTY is a wonderful package, IMHO.  I am using it for
several years, and I have yet to see a single serious bug or
misfeature.  Since I have it installed, I never looked back on the
Cygwin ports of ssh.)