Re: ls-lisp and remote files

[Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

>> I have implemented these change on my own machine (dired.c, lisp.h,
>> ls-lisp.el, tramp.el) and it seems to work fine.
>
>> I want to ask people what you think about this suggestion.
>
> I think this was requested already in the past and it would be
> good to have.  Maybe someone else remembers better in which context
> this came up and what was done about it.

I had a similar problem with remote VC.  Now Tramp does weird stuff to
circumvent the numerical ids problem, I think.  I think the most
recent workaround is that Michael made it so that Tramp invents user
ids for remote files and maintains its own mapping between user id and
user name.  But that doesn't make sense.

I also remember that I looked in the whole Emacs source tree (Lisp
part only, though) to see if the numerical id is ever actually used.
It turned out that what the code really wants is the user name.

So I believe it would be good to at least offer the code the ability
to request names instead of numbers, and to then convert the existing
code to the names.  Then, VC could work without those kludges.

Warning: I'm out of the loop now and my memory is hazy, quite possibly
this is wrong.  *sigh*  Later, I'll be able to invest more brains into
this, I hope.

Kai