CVS Bug? Losing auto save files

CVS Bug? Losing auto save files

[Dan Anderson]

        I'm  following  the CVS  version  of  Emacs.   My ssh  session
crashed, and I M-x recover-file to the  file.  But I had a copy of the
file open,  so I get  an error  like "can't work  on the file".   So I
close the file and  try to recover file it and no  dice -- the recover
file was deleted.

A) Is there any way to get back my work?
B) Is this  a bug or was I  just really dumb to open  the file without
recovering it?
C) Is there a gnusgroup for bugs / CVS emacs so I don't need to bother
people here??

Thanks,

Dan

Re: CVS Bug? Losing auto save files

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> From: Dan Anderson <dan@mathjunkies.com>
> Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 04:29:46 GMT
> 
>         I'm  following  the CVS  version  of  Emacs.

Thanks for reporting this.  However, problems with the CVS version are
best reported to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org (if you think this might be
a bug).

> My ssh  session
> crashed, and I M-x recover-file to the  file.  But I had a copy of the
> file open,  so I get  an error  like "can't work  on the file".

Maybe I'm dense, but I don't get this: what do you mean by ``but I
have a copy of the file open''?  Who or what holds it open, and why?
The crashed session cannot have anything to do with that, assuming
that you ran Emacs in it, since Emacs closes the file immediately
after it reads it into a buffer.

Also, please make a point of reporting the exact wording of the error
messages you see.  ``An error like "can't work on the file"'' is not
a very helpful description, as none of us here has a crystal ball to
see what was displayed on your screen.

I suspect that the message was talking about a file being locked by
Emacs that ran in the crashed session, in which case you should have
stolen the lock (one of the possibilities Emacs offers you in the
message it displays in that case).

> So I close the file

How did you ``close the file'', exactly?  Emacs has no such operation;
the only one I can think about is an item labeled "Close (current
buffer)" in the menu-bar's "File" menu.  Is that what you did?

> and  try to recover file it and no  dice -- the recover
> file was deleted.
> 
> A) Is there any way to get back my work?

If the auto-save file was deleted, you cannot recover your work,
sorry.  But Emacs always asks before it kills a buffer which has
unsaved changes, so you should have been given a chance to repent.

> B) Is this  a bug or was I  just really dumb to open  the file without
> recovering it?

The latter.

> C) Is there a gnusgroup for bugs / CVS emacs so I don't need to bother
> people here??

See above.  If you use "M-x report-emacs-bug RET", which is the proper
vehicle for reporting bugs, Emacs will send the message to the
appropriate address automatically (it knows that it's a CVS version).
Take a look at the "Bugs" section of the Emacs manual some day.

Re: CVS Bug? Losing auto save files

[Dan Anderson]

Thanks, I  will try and figure out  how to reproduce the  bug and then
send in a bug report.

-Dan