I use it every day with rlogin-program set to a non-default ssh client (which isn't suitable for other ssh uses, e.g. in tramp), so I would be sad if it went away. Using shell with the default directory couples the remote execution with remote file access which I find undesirable. It is not very performant in the environments I use to access remote files via tramp. Using rlogin, I can do m-x cd to set the default directory for the rlogin buffer to a local (i.e. on the machine running emacs) path of the same filesystem I am using on the remote machine. In this case tracking of directory changes works correctly but I also have fast (local) tab completion and file opening.

On Mar 21, 2018 9:11 AM, "Michael Albinus" <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:

Hi,

I propose to mark rlogin.el as obsolete in Emacs 27. We don't need its
functionality any longer.

It's major functionality, an interactive shell on a remote host, is
available by a combination of Tramp (a remote default-directory), and
the `shell' command.

The other unique feature of rlogin.el, tracking directory changes, works
for local files in shell.el, and it works partly for remote files. In
rlogin.el it doesn't work proper, because remote files (for example in
compilation-minor-mode) are accessed by ange-ftp.

Instead of reworking rlogin.el it looks more promising to polish shell.el.

There is also the comment in rlogin.el:

;; FIXME?
;; Maybe this file should be obsolete.
;; https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-devel/2013-02/msg00517.html
;; It only adds rlogin-directory-tracking-mode. Is that useful?

Comments?

Best regards, Michael.