Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous? (was: Re: [PATCH] fix corruption of ~/.emacs when trying to migrate an init file XEmacs can't fully load)
10:31 p.m.
2007/10/3, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org> wrote:
Jason Spiro writes:
> This is a patch for a preference-corruption issue. XEmacs (I use
> xemacs-21.5.27)
...
[this patch is] probably not good
enough by itself, there are other paths to the same unfortunate result.
OK. So auto-migration corrupts some .emacs files. I bet this makes
some users dislike XEmacs even though XEmacs made a backup of .emacs
first.
All: do you think ~/.emacs auto-migration is worthwhile or not?
Please write "yes" or "no" to the list. If you want, add some
comments.
--
Jason Spiro: corporate trainer, web developer, IT consultant.
I support Linux, UNIX, Windows, and more.
Contact me to discuss your needs and get a free estimate.
+1 (613) 668-6096 / Email: info(a)jspiro.com / MSN: jasonspiro(a)hotmail.com
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11:33 p.m.
Jason Spiro writes:
OK. So auto-migration corrupts some .emacs files. I bet this makes
some users dislike XEmacs even though XEmacs made a backup of .emacs
first.
No, unfortunately it's not automigration really, it's custom itself.
Most of the paths to corruption I have seen reported involve
automigration, but the basic problem is that custom doesn't take any
precautions when writing a new custom file, period. If (as in GNU
Emacs) the init file and the custom file are the same, you can lose an
awful lot.
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11:41 p.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
"Jason Spiro" <jasonspiro4(a)gmail.com> writes:
2007/10/3, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org> wrote:
> Jason Spiro writes:
>
> > This is a patch for a preference-corruption issue. XEmacs (I use
> > xemacs-21.5.27)
...
> [this patch is] probably not good
> enough by itself, there are other paths to the same unfortunate result.
OK. So auto-migration corrupts some .emacs files. I bet this makes
some users dislike XEmacs even though XEmacs made a backup of .emacs
first.
All: do you think ~/.emacs auto-migration is worthwhile or not?
Please write "yes" or "no" to the list. If you want, add some
comments.
No. It is fine to search ~/.xemacs/init.el in preference to ~/.emacs.
And it is fine to tell the user when .emacs can't be loaded
successfully. And it would also be fine if XEmacs offered to copy
.emacs to a not previously existing ~/.xemacs/init.el and tried
adapting it there.
But it clearly is "hands off" when it comes to actually modifying
.emacs itself.
XEmacs users might not feel strongly about this, but if trying out
XEmacs once can clobber a working Emacs setup without any obvious
warning, you are not going to make friends.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
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3:26 a.m.
On 10/3/07, Jason Spiro <jasonspiro4(a)gmail.com> wrote:
All: do you think ~/.emacs auto-migration is worthwhile or not?
Please write "yes" or "no" to the list. If you want, add some
comments.
I hated and opposed this feature when it was proposed, I hated and
opposed it when it was made a default. I hate it even more
now having to code around it in my current job.
I think it should just be taken somewhere and beaten with a very
large stick until it's dead, dead, dead.
There are exactly 0 valid usages of it and an apparently infinite number
of harmful ones.
-sb
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6:32 a.m.
SL Baur writes:
There are exactly 0 valid usages of it and an apparently infinite
number
of harmful ones.
Nonsense. Custom is badly broken in this respect; it simply
overwrites anything it can find, globally. Most of the time it
doesn't cause any problems, but when there *are* problems the failure
mode is catastrophic. The point of the automatic migration is to get
people to use a separate ~/.xemacs/custom.el, and apparently it's been
fairly successful. As a symptom, "Why doesn't my handwritten
(custom-set-something ...) form DTRT?" used to be a FAQ, now it's
very rare; I've seen it recently, but the time before that was
literally years ago. Automatic migration was a good idea and still
is.
It is obvious that backing up files that we're going to overwrite is
long overdue ... but Custom still doesn't do that, a tradition of
screwing the user that goes back at least 10 years! (Which makes an
implementation of auto-migration that depends on `custom-save' to be
safe a criminal act, IMO. But I've never had time to fix it.)
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11:37 p.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
SL Baur writes:
> There are exactly 0 valid usages of it and an apparently infinite number
> of harmful ones.
Nonsense. Custom is badly broken in this respect; it simply
overwrites anything it can find, globally. Most of the time it
doesn't cause any problems, but when there *are* problems the
failure mode is catastrophic. The point of the automatic migration
is to get people to use a separate ~/.xemacs/custom.el, and
apparently it's been fairly successful. As a symptom, "Why doesn't
my handwritten (custom-set-something ...) form DTRT?" used to be a
FAQ, now it's very rare; I've seen it recently, but the time before
that was literally years ago. Automatic migration was a good idea
and still is.
Isn't the purpose of a poll _getting_ rather than _pushing_ opinions?
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
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5:01 a.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
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Hash: SHA1
"David" == David Kastrup <dak(a)gnu.org> wrote:
David> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
> SL Baur writes:
>
> > There are exactly 0 valid usages of it and an apparently infinite number
> > of harmful ones.
>
> Nonsense. Custom is badly broken in this respect; it simply
> overwrites anything it can find, globally. Most of the time it
> doesn't cause any problems, but when there *are* problems the
> failure mode is catastrophic. The point of the automatic migration
> is to get people to use a separate ~/.xemacs/custom.el, and
> apparently it's been fairly successful. As a symptom, "Why doesn't
> my handwritten (custom-set-something ...) form DTRT?" used to be a
> FAQ, now it's very rare; I've seen it recently, but the time before
> that was literally years ago. Automatic migration was a good idea
> and still is.
David> Isn't the purpose of a poll _getting_ rather than _pushing_ opinions?
I've always seen (political) polls being used to push opinions, by way
of the methodology, so I guess it is not unheard of :-)
[...]
BTW I have no opinion, because ever since XEmacs 19.14 I have no .emacs,
and I remember at the time it basically did the right thing (from what I
read mostly because I did not use custom at the time)
- --
Nelson Ferreira
GPG:7420ED20 Fingerprint:9DFE 82A7 C689 BAEE EC25 A8E8 3C64 1789 7420 ED20
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6:06 a.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
David Kastrup writes:
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
> SL Baur writes:
>
> > There are exactly 0 valid usages of it and an apparently infinite number
> > of harmful ones.
>
> Nonsense.
Isn't the purpose of a poll _getting_ rather than _pushing_ opinions?
Depends on how you define "opinion", of course. To the extent that
Steve is saying "I think automigration sucks" in a rather implicit
way, it's an opinion and to the extent that I have anything to do with
changes to the automigration code (including removal) I'll take it
into account.
But as a fact, he's wrong; I provided a counterexample. There are
valid use cases.
As for my personal opinion, I didn't much like it what I first saw it,
and I still think that any code that trusts Custom to DTRT in edge
cases is setting up users for a big fall. OTOH, I think automigration
has helped to reduce the incidence of the FAQ as I described it,
though it's anybody's guess as to how much.
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3:06 p.m.
Jason Spiro wrote:
OK. So auto-migration corrupts some .emacs files. I bet this makes
some users dislike XEmacs even though XEmacs made a backup of .emacs
first.
All: do you think ~/.emacs auto-migration is worthwhile or not?
Please write "yes" or "no" to the list. If you want, add some
comments.
Auto-migration is annoying. Especially, when you are trying to test
XEmacs on a new platform where you actually use Emacs for daily work,
e.g. Carbon port. I understand the rationale for it, but it just
doesn't work. The Emacs settings may not even make sense to XEmacs due
to different packages installed. Of course, if you carefully coded
your .emacs with featurep, etc. But, who thinks that far ahead? What
I'm always thinking is, it would be great to have XEmacs instead of
Emacs, let me see if it works ... ouch!
Rodney
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8:54 a.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
Rodney Sparapani <rsparapa(a)mcw.edu> writes:
Jason Spiro wrote:
>
> OK. So auto-migration corrupts some .emacs files. I bet this makes
> some users dislike XEmacs even though XEmacs made a backup of .emacs
> first.
>
> All: do you think ~/.emacs auto-migration is worthwhile or not?
> Please write "yes" or "no" to the list. If you want, add some
> comments.
>
Auto-migration is annoying. Especially, when you are trying to test
XEmacs on a new platform where you actually use Emacs for daily work,
e.g. Carbon port.
There's something I'm missing: Just say no to auto-migration the first
time, and it will remember and not ask you again.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla
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3:40 p.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
Michael Sperber wrote:
>>
> Auto-migration is annoying. Especially, when you are trying to test
> XEmacs on a new platform where you actually use Emacs for daily work,
> e.g. Carbon port.
There's something I'm missing: Just say no to auto-migration the first
time, and it will remember and not ask you again.
Oops! I replied to Michael alone, and with some bad info I think. What
I was missing was what migration meant. I guess what I thought I was
answering is not what was going to happen. So, just to be clear. If
you say no, then nothing happens, right? In hindsight, I should have
just said no and done it by hand. Stephen's point about custom may be a
good one as well. However, if we all just say no, then there is no help
there, right? Migration has not happened often enough for me to get a
good idea of what I should be doing and maybe others are similarly
confused. So, anything that can be done to clear this up would most
likely be helpful.
Thanks,
Rodney
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9:45 p.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
Rodney Sparapani writes:
However, if we all just say no, then there is no help there, right?
Maybe this does need to be rethought. There was a time when all
XEmacs users had .emacs. Today, people who start by installing XEmacs
will get .xemacs/init.el by default. People who are just trying
XEmacs probably don't want .emacs moved (although GNU Emacs 22.1 has a
similar scheme, under the name .emacs.d I believe).
Migration has not happened often enough for me to get a good idea
of what I should be doing and maybe others are similarly confused.
You probably want to stick to .emacs until you've moved to a GNU Emacs
that prefers .emacs.d or whatever it's called, or conversely you get a
native Mac XEmacs that you consider satisfactory for your daily work,
and aren't going to need an Emacs again.
It's possible that maybe people who use both Emacs and XEmacs are the
main case where XEmacs will encounter a .emacs that's left these days.
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7:56 a.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
Rodney Sparapani <rsparapa(a)mcw.edu> writes:
Michael Sperber wrote:
>>>
>> Auto-migration is annoying. Especially, when you are trying to test
>> XEmacs on a new platform where you actually use Emacs for daily work,
>> e.g. Carbon port.
>
> There's something I'm missing: Just say no to auto-migration the first
> time, and it will remember and not ask you again.
>
Oops! I replied to Michael alone, and with some bad info I think.
What I was missing was what migration meant. I guess what I thought I
was answering is not what was going to happen. So, just to be clear.
If you say no, then nothing happens, right? In hindsight, I should
have just said no and done it by hand. Stephen's point about custom
may be a good one as well. However, if we all just say no, then there
is no help there, right? Migration has not happened often enough for
me to get a good idea of what I should be doing and maybe others are
similarly confused. So, anything that can be done to clear this up
would most likely be helpful.
You've made some good suggestions, and there's probably at least one
thing I can do to improve matters. It might be until next week or the
week after until I get to it, however.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla
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1:26 a.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
Three weeks ago, Michael Sperber <sperber(a)informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
...
You've made some good suggestions, and there's probably at
least one
thing I can do to improve matters. It might be until next week or the
week after until I get to it, however.
Michael, what was your idea to improve matters?
Regards,
Jason
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1:02 p.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
Sorry to be so late with this. I just sent in a patch for this, that I
intend to push on Friday if nobody objects.
Jason Spiro <jasonspiro4(a)gmail.com> writes:
Three weeks ago, Michael Sperber
<sperber(a)informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
...
> You've made some good suggestions, and there's probably at least one
> thing I can do to improve matters. It might be until next week or the
> week after until I get to it, however.
Michael, what was your idea to improve matters?
Essentially this:
Leave ~/.emacs as it is, only adding a line that tells XEmacs that the
user is not interested in ~/.xemacs/init.el. This line, which was
formerly added through customize, is now added "manually", avoiding the
potential corruption we've been seeing.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla
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4:52 p.m.
New subject: Poll: is ~/.emacs auto-migration worthwhile? Or too dangerous?
Michael Sperber <sperber <at> deinprogramm.de> writes:
...
I just sent in a patch for this, that I
intend to push on Friday if nobody objects.
Thank you. Users hate issues causing data loss (including .emacs contents
loss), so it's very kind of you to tackle this.
--Jason
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participants (10)
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David Kastrup -
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Jason Spiro -
Michael Sperber -
Michael Sperber -
Nelson Ferreira -
Rodney Sparapani -
SL Baur -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
Stephen J. Turnbull