Re: Optional argument for `file-local-copy'

[Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

[sorry to reply late, but these days there isn't too much time I could
spend for Emacs]

> There's a big difference: with today's file-local-copy the caller is
> always responsible to delete the file, so if the caller doesn't delete
> the file, it's a bug in the caller.
>
> With your proposal, if it's not the responsibility of the caller, then
> it necessarily ends up being the handler's responsibility.  Hence my
> earlier complaint that the handler is not allowed to simply ignore the
> new argument.

No, it is still the caller's responsibility to delete the file. The new
argument is not intended to move this responsibility to the handler; I
expect the caller to keep the file only for a while when it is expecting
that a given file is needed several times (like meta information if a file
in vc).

Additional functionality (remove local copies at the end of an Emacs
session; give the local copies a timeout after which they expire, and so
on) should be only additional support.

>         Stefan

Best regards, Michael.