Re: Managing environments (Python venv, guix environment, etc.)

[sbaugh@catern.com]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> See, the above 2 paragraphs contradict each other.  The second one is
> precisely the kind of breakage I had in mind and feared of, and I see
> now that we are in violent agreement regarding such a possibility.
>
> Prepending directories to PATH doesn't solve these problems.  E.g., if
> the prepended directory holds a version of gzip that is "broken" in
> the above-mentioned meaning in the environment of a project, then
> Emacs will be unable to visit gzip-compressed files, such as Info
> manuals and its own Lisp sources.
>
> I think we need to avoid this danger.

That is all true. I was of the opinion that it was not quite so
dangerous because this method worked fine most of the time for
shells. But I agree now - we should be careful, and abide by higher
standards.

And I think the suggestion I made in the email I sent just before this,
to use a new kind of magic path, and thereby reuse all the process-file
infrastructure, is the best way to be careful in this matter.

Only the programs that can and should be run remotely, use process-file;
and I contend that those programs are exactly and exclusively the things
we want to run inside a custom environment.