Re: Tramp 2.1.9

[Pete Forman]

At 2007-04-23 14:46 +0200, Michael Albinus wrote:
> Pete Forman <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > plink would not work at first because tramp-default-user-alist makes
> > it pick up user-login-name (my Windows username) when I want it to use
> > tramp-default-user (my UNIX username).  So I Customized the alist to
> > remove the remsh...plink entry.
>
> Both `tramp-default-user-alist' and `tramp-default-user' are
> _proposals_ only. There is no good default which your remote user name
> could be but your local user name ...

Ah but there is ;-)  I had used tramp-default-user to specify the
remote user name used by most of my accounts.  A single default can
make sense if only one protocol family is used predominantly.  That
being said I agree that tramp-default-user should be deprecated in
favor of tramp-default-user-alist.

> In fact Tramp expects that a user specifies his remote user name
> either in the file name. Or that the user adds its own default to
> `tramp-default-user-alist'.

Okay.

> `add-to-list' inserts by default at the beginning of the list; your
> own settings have priority over Tramp's settings. So there is no need
> to nukenize `tramp-default-user-alist'.

It's just that when I come to Customize tramp-default-user-alist I'm
presented with a mismatch and raw lisp for a value.  It is my
understanding that a variable declared with defcustom is a User Option
and should not be modified by the code.  add-to-list is called in
several places. One way to handle that is to have a new ordinary
variable that gets its initial value from tramp-default-user-alist
and then is added to.  No doubt there are more elegant alternatives.

> > plinkx is working too.
> >
> > Perhaps I should not be using tramp-default-user.  There is a warning
> > in its doc about mucking up some config files.
>
> The "plinkx" method does not pass "-u user" to the plink command. So
> it shouldn't harm. `tramp-default-user' would be used only if set and
> if the corresponding PuTTY session does not specify a user. Given that
> "plinkx" is _intended_ to reuse defined PuTTY sessions, I don't see a
> big problem.

My second paragraph was talking about plink, not plinkx; we agree.


> In fact `tramp-default-user' is kept for backwards compatibility
> reasons only.

I see.  Maybe you could tweak its doc to emphasize that.

--
Pete Forman                -./\.-  Disclaimer: This post is originated
WesternGeco                  -./\.-   by myself and does not represent
address@hidden    -./\.-   the opinion of Schlumberger or
http://petef.port5.com           -./\.-   WesternGeco.