bug#4902: 23.1; directory-abbrev-alist is not handled early enough

["David J. Biesack" <David.Biesack@sas.com>]

> Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:11:54 +0200
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> CC: <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
> 
> > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:29:36 -0500
> > From: "David J. Biesack" <David.Biesack@sas.com>
> > Cc: 4902@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com
> > 
> > Obviously, there are too many different names for the same file,
> > and I want Emacs to normalize all files to a canonical
> > form

> So you are trying to solve in Emacs a problem that is not for Emacs to
> solve.  You are trying to emulate a symlink using Emacs features that
> are not at all intended for such a use.

I could not disagree more. Emacs is and has been my primary operating
environment for my job; it is my primary tool for working with all
of the files on our network. We're a big organization (10,000 people)
and there are many different and independent servers and configurations that
I must integrate, and Emacs is my only hope.

If you choose to not allow Emacs proper to assist, I'll just go it
alone. But other people around the world have to deal with networks and 
file aliases;; I'd rather see Emacs help all of us.

> Personally, I don't think this problem even should be solved in
> Emacs.  You still have other tools which need to see the correct file
> name, so any mapping Emacs does internally will never be sufficient.

Some progress is better than no progress.
 
> About the only thing I can suggest is to run with the drive u: being
> the current drive.  Then /foo/bar on both Windows and Unix will refer
> to the same place, and you don't need any mapping at all.

that still won't work for Unix network paths that are not mapped in U:
 
> If that doesn't help for some reason, I think you need to solve your
> problem in an entirely different manner.

so I will.

-- 
David J. Biesack, SAS
SAS Campus Dr. Cary, NC 27513
www.sas.com    (919) 531-7771