Re: vc-find-revision-no-save?

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > I can answer this one: because back when we wrote this code, the "Git"
>   > of the day was called "CVS" and getting a historic revision required
>   > fetching it from the centralized server, so you were usually quite happy
>   > to keep a local copy, even if you had to erase them manually every once
>   > in a while.
>
> I still sometimes use CVS, and this feature is still useful with it.

In that case the suggestion to change the behaviour depending on the VCS
should be fine.  If a VCS requires a network connection, storing the
files locally can be helpful.

Adding a third value for `vc-find-revision-no-save', something like
`if-remove', could be a nice default.

>   > > If that is the motivation, is there a reason the files are stored on the
>   > > current working directory, instead of using /tmp or ~/.cache?
>
> I think it is natural to put old-version files in the same directory
> with the work files.  That's where one can find them again.

Natural out of habit or natural out of necessity?  I remember being
surprised that after inspecting a few old versions of a file that my
directory was littered with the these files.