Re: Optional argument for `file-local-copy'

[Michael Albinus]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>> I expect the caller to keep the file only for a while when it is
>> expecting that a given file is needed several times (like meta
>> information if a file in vc).
>
> I'm wondering how often the caller will be able to make use of this
> (i.e. how often it will happen that two or more calls to file-local-copy
> will require the same file and will know enough about each other to
> coordinate the file-deletion).
>
> Do you have some callers in mind?

The first idea to this came when I saw
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/92856>. It offered a patch
to keep some copied remote images in a cache in order to redisplay
them.

Another evidence for such functionality is vc. If you open a remote file
under bzr control, there will be local copies of .bzr/checkout/dirstate,
.bzr/branch/format and .bzr/branch/last-revision. In the cvs case,
CVS/Entries is taken via file-local-copy. And there might be similar
cases for the other vc backends, I haven't checked. All of them are
candidates for a file cache as proposed.

>         Stefan

Best regards, Michael.