Re: New names for VC local version backups

[Stefan Monnier]

> > Stefan and I figured that we need to use a different naming scheme for
> > automatic version backups (the new mechanism that lets you do local
> > diffs and reverts).  This is so we can automatically delete them
> > without interfering with the user.  Thus, these files are no longer
> > named FILE.~x.y~, as it is done by C-x v ~, but I've rather chosen
> > FILE.#x.y# for now.
> 
> Won't this make problems with the commands and features that manage
> backup files?  IIRC, they all recognize backup files as having `~' as
> their last character.
> 
> Also, what about MS-DOS?  Does this mean these features won't work in the 
> MS-DOS port?

I agree that the choice of file name is a serious issue.
My personal favorite would be to use CVS/Base/<file>.~<rev>~, since
these files are (currently) only used for CVS and CVS already uses
CVS/Base for something related (except it doesn't guarantee that those
files are unmodified w.r.t the version in the repository
and doesn't put any version info either).
Also it would be more transparent.

> As for interfering with the user, I don't follow: when VC is in use,
> Emacs doesn't make backup files, so what interference did you have in
> mind?

The problem is that when a cache file is not needed any more,
we'd like to remove it (else, they tend to accumulate rather quickly).
But we can't blindly remove them because they might have been put
there by the user (since nothing marks them as specifically "cache").


        Stefan