Re: ange-ftp and sftp?

[Phillip Lord <p.lord@cs.man.ac.uk>]

>>>>> "Miles" == Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

  Miles> Phillip Lord <p.lord@cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
  >> It would probably be easier just to use tramp instead. I don't
  >> know if it will do sftp, but I do know that it can tunnel
  >> directly through ssh. I use this all the time.
  >>
  >> I suspect that you have never tried tramp. It's a fine package!

  Miles> There was some discussion of this before, and the conclusion
  Miles> reached was just the opposite.

  Miles> Tramp works ok in it's domain, and is a valuable tool in
  Miles> situations where nothing else works, but it's essentially
  Miles> very inefficient (if you look at what it's doing you'll gag
  Miles> on your wheaties).  Ange-ftp, by relying on ftp's direct
  Miles> support of various file-system operations, can be _much_ more
  Miles> efficient (and more reliable) -- and sftp is basically like
  Miles> ftp with many of the bogosities removed.

  Miles> Certainly ange-ftp is an old and crufty mode, and probably
  Miles> would need a bunch of work to eliminate assumptions about
  Miles> ftp, but apparently tramp would need even more work to handle
  Miles> sftp properly.


I didn't know this. From my perspective, efficiency is not that much
of an issue though. It would be nice if it ran a little quicker, but
it works well for me. 

I'm guessing that tramp tries to abstract over the different transport
mechanisms, and so can't use their features as much?

Phil