Hidden symlinks, sshfs, and svn

Hidden symlinks, sshfs, and svn

[Tavian Barnes]

I've noticed that emacs creates hidden symlinks when unsaved files are
left open long enough (regardless of auto-save-mode) named something
like '.#<filename>' and pointing to something like
'<username>@<host>.<domain>.<PID of emacs>:<some long number>'.  They
generally go away if you save the file, or if you close emacs, so I've
never had a problem with them, until now.  The problem I'm having is:
sshfs, with '-o follow_symlinks', is confused by these links, since
they don't point anywhere reasonable.  As such, they cannot be deleted
by 'rm' on the client, so I have to use ssh to get rid of them.  I
can't just ignore them, because svn crashes with "svn: Can't read
directory 'dirname': Partial results are valid but processing is
incomplete." upon encountering a directory with these links.

So:

- From an informative standpoint, what purpose do these links have?
- How can I tell emacs not to create them?  Or, is there a better way
to deal with this problem?

-- 
Tavian Barnes

Re: Hidden symlinks, sshfs, and svn

[Nikolaj Schumacher]

"Tavian Barnes" <tavianator@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've noticed that emacs creates hidden symlinks when unsaved files are
> left open long enough (regardless of auto-save-mode) named something
> like '.#<filename>' and pointing to something like
> '<username>@<host>.<domain>.<PID of emacs>:<some long number>'.
>
> [SNIP]
>
> - From an informative standpoint, what purpose do these links have?

I believe they are used to "lock" the file to prevent editing the file
from different emacs instances.

> - How can I tell emacs not to create them?  Or, is there a better way
> to deal with this problem?

I've never had problems with svn.  I have the following in my
~/.subversion/config, so that might help:

[miscellany]
global-ignores = \#*\# .*~ *~ .\#*



regards,
Nikolaj Schumacher