bug#18693: 25.0.50; backup user options

bug#18693: 25.0.50; backup user options

[Drew Adams]

There are several user options for customizing file backups
(`backup-by-*').  Wading through the doc strings or Customize buffers
for them, it seems that they could all be consolidated under option
`make-backup-files', by letting different non-nil values provide the
different backup behaviors.

To be clear: I really don't care about this.  Consider it feedback that
it seems that Emacs is making things unnecessarily complicated for
users, here, and it should be possible to do things better.  If no one
wants to do that, fine.

Also, things have been like this since at least Emacs 20, and users
already have various `backup-by-*' options in their custom or init
files.  So if this were simplified then some remapping/aliasing would
need to happen.

In GNU Emacs 25.0.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32)
 of 2014-10-06 on LEG570
Bzr revision: 118063 monnier@iro.umontreal.ca-20141006174756-y7ha091r491l1ijw
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601
Configured using:
 `configure --enable-checking=yes,glyphs 'CFLAGS=-O0 -g3'
 CPPFLAGS=-DGLYPH_DEBUG=1'

bug#18693: 25.0.50; backup user options

[Stefan Kangas]

tags 18693 + wontfix
close 18693
thanks

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> There are several user options for customizing file backups
> (`backup-by-*').  Wading through the doc strings or Customize buffers
> for them, it seems that they could all be consolidated under option
> `make-backup-files', by letting different non-nil values provide the
> different backup behaviors.
>
> To be clear: I really don't care about this.  Consider it feedback that
> it seems that Emacs is making things unnecessarily complicated for
> users, here, and it should be possible to do things better.  If no one
> wants to do that, fine.

Thanks for this feature request.

As far as I can tell we have the following options:

    backup-by-copying
      User option: Non-nil means always use copying to create backup
                   files.
    backup-by-copying-when-linked
      User option: Non-nil means use copying to create backups for files
                   with multiple names.
    backup-by-copying-when-mismatch
      User option: Non-nil means create backups by copying if this
                   preserves owner or group.
    backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch
      User option: Non-nil means create backups by copying to preserve a
                   privileged owner.
    backup-directory-alist
      User option: Alist of file name patterns and backup directory names.
    backup-enable-predicate
      Variable: Predicate that looks at a file name and decides whether to
                make backups.
    backup-inhibited
      Variable: If non-nil, backups will be inhibited.

All in all, I don't think it is too bad.  The options clearly express
what they do, and they seem orthogonal to each other.

> Also, things have been like this since at least Emacs 20, and users
> already have various `backup-by-*' options in their custom or init
> files.  So if this were simplified then some remapping/aliasing would
> need to happen.

More importantly, and as you correctly observe, creating a consolidated
variable, even if it is a good idea (maybe it is), would lead to a lot
of user configurations breaking or needing updating.  So on balance, I
don't think this is worth spending time on or doing, and I'm therefore
closing this bug report.