bug#737: vc-dir reports unregistered-then-deleted file is "up-to-date"

[Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu>]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

  > Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > 
  > > I just don't think it should be the default.  I do think that it's
  > > fundamentally broken, so I don't want to have anything to do with it.
  > >
  > >   > Or introduce a vc-dir-stay-local, default nil?
  > >
  > > I'd prefer it *stay-local would not pollute vc-dir.el, none of the
  > > modern VC systems needs it, so there's no good reason to deal with it in
  > > the future.
  > 
  > As a user of older version control systems, I can't help but feel
  > disenfranchised.
  > 
  > I see these options:
  > 
  > 1) Take out the checks for stay-local I added recently; vc-dir will
  > always contact the server. Which is fine if you want to argue that
  > this is a new feature, but I will file a wishlist bug to have similar
  > behaviour re-added at some later date.

Note that I only said that this is a bad default.
Being inconsistent with all other similar tools (and hence user
expectations) by default is wrong.

The reason a single person asked about this is to be able to use CVS
offline.  But vc-dir is useless with CVS offline, it will just tell you
that you have edited some files, you can't do any interesting
operations.

  > 2) Add a vc-dir-stay-local, default nil, which overrides the others.

I would object to anything in vc-dir that deals with this.  
vc-dir is new code, it should not be saddled with stuff that will be
unused in a few years.  

Here's an analogy: we have code in vc that deals with automatically
checking out RCS files if they don't exist.  How many people care about
that?  But the code is still there and runs by default.   I don't want
to be stuck with this in vc-dir until the end of time.

More, this can all be done in the CVS VC backend.  No reason to pollute
the vc-dir core with this stuff.  It is even possible to add a CVS
specific menu entry with a radio button to the VC-dir backend to toggle
between the behaviors.

  > 3) Change the defaults of vc-stay-local and friends to be nil.
  > 
  > 4) Leave as at present, on the assumption that people understand that
  > vc-stay-local et al mean sacrificing accuracy for other gains.

That would be bad, things were working much better for the majority of
people before the change.

  > It's probably too late for 3) for 23.1. You seem to be set against 2).
  > That doesn't leave much.
  > 
  > Anyway, you wrote vc-dir. What would you like me to do?

Please change the default to do what it did before.  I have no opinion
on what to do about switching between the 2 behaviors as long as it does
not touch vc-dir.el.

Thanks