From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Lewis Perin Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Windows Emacs and "VirtualStore" Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:47:47 -0400 Message-ID: Reply-To: perin@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1271519283 15079 80.91.229.12 (17 Apr 2010 15:48:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 15:48:03 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Apr 17 17:48:02 2010 connect(): No such file or directory Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O3AFV-0002Y7-OZ for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:48:02 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:46292 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O3AFV-0004ub-44 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:48:01 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1O3AFO-0004tS-Vx for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:47:55 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=40924 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O3AFM-0004sO-Ji for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:47:54 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O3AFK-0008Tu-GR for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:47:52 -0400 Original-Received: from mail1.panix.com ([166.84.1.72]:61556) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O3AFK-0008To-Cm for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:47:50 -0400 Original-Received: from panix1.panix.com (panix1.panix.com [166.84.1.1]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B2491F0B0 for ; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:47:49 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: by panix1.panix.com (Postfix, from userid 13816) id 466A114B98; Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:47:49 -0400 (EDT) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (berkeley-unix) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:123806 Archived-At: Hello, Emacs developers. I recently posted a query to gnu.emacs.help and was told my request would be more appropriately sent to this forum. So I subscribed, and here I am. I just finished a long period of confusion after upgrading my Windows machine from XP to Windows 7. (What I'm about to say does apply to Vista as well as 7, by the way.) I've been running Emacs as an unprivileged user, responsible citizen that I am. I ran into trouble configuring a program whose config data lie within the "Program Files" tree. What's new in Windows since XP is that that tree is not to be edited without privilege, but I forgot about that. And, in Emacs, it looked for all the world as if my edits were being applied where I thought they were going. But the program was behaving as if it had never run into the changes I'd made. Eventually I ran into http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/windows_virtualstore.html which explains that, under Vista or Windows 7, the changes I was making were *silently* being written into shadow copies of the "real" files out in what's called "VirtualStore" in recent MS jargon. (I'm not going to fulminate here about MS's decision to do things in this way - they won't back down.) Xah Lee suggests running Emacs as administrator, but I'd rather not have an admin Emacs running perpetually. My reading of this MS document http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756929.aspx is that the problem of the silent redirection of writes would go away if Windows Emacs had an appropriate "manifest file" with a Requested Execution Level of "asInvoker". That way, the write should fail the way it would under XP if the file were locked, say. I would actually prefer it if Emacs would give the user a chance to try to escalate privilege in the sudo-ish way many Windows apps now employ. I'm guessing that would require some work in the guts of Emacs. With my shaky understanding of Emacs internals, I'm really not sure how feasible these suggestions are. Can someone who does understand these things please comment? Thanks very much for your attention. /Lew --- Lew Perin / perin@acm.org http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html