[slime-devel] Re: Backups and Slime

[GP lisper]

On Tue, 24 May 2005 11:59:07 +0100, <dan at telent.net> wrote:
> GP lisper <spambait at CloudDancer.com> writes:
>
>> With the root user, ~N~ backups are fine, regardless of the file ext.
>> With the lisp user (I have one username exclusively for lisp work),
>> ~N~ backups work on everything but .lisp files.  So the version
>> control settings would seem to be active, and testing in a *scratch*
>> emacs buffer shows expected values.
>
> You mention CVS.  Are you sure that the difference is between lisp
> files and all other files, or is it that the lisp files are under CVS
> and the others are not?

Good question, as it seems a bit more complicated.  The lisp user has
a directory named 'lisp', where lisp source and various usenet posts
are stored, under .lisp and .nfo.  I had forgotten that the .nfo files
are not backed up either.  I don't know how something might have come
under CVS control, it might have been something Gentoo did, but I
would think that one of the emacs init files would need to have
appropriate variables set.  Neither .emacs or default.el have any
emacs variables starting with vc- or otherwise sounding like version
control.  It would need to be default emacs behavior, and somehow
include the .nfo files (perhaps via the directory name ??).  There are
no .cvs or .rcs directories in ~/lisp.

> If emacs can detect that a file is under CVS it will not by default
> generate ~ or numbered backup files for it.  
>
>      Emacs normally does not save backup files for source files that
>   are maintained with version control.  If you want to make backup
>   files even for files that use version control, set the variable
>   `vc-make-backup-files' to a non-`nil' value.
>
> from the Info node '(emacs) General VC Options'.  This is to my mind
> the kind of DWESRM crap that we're conditioned to expect from VC mode,
> but there you go.

As usual with these sorts of posts, I did come across this information
about 5 minutes after posting.  I thought, 'Ah hah!'.  I added:

; version control settings
(setq
 backup-by-copying t
 backup-directory-alist '(("." . "~/.saves"))
 delete-old-versions t
 kept-new-versions 9
 kept-old-versions 1
 make-backup-files t
 vc-make-backup-files t
 version-control t
)

NO change, backups still MIA.  But vc-make-backup-files might be
overridden, so here are the *Messages* from startup:

Loading tool-bar...done
Loading image...done
Loading tooltip...done
Loading /usr/libexec/emacs/21.4/i686-pc-linux-gnu/fns-21.4.1.el (source)...done
Loading time...done
Loading cl-macs...done
Loading cl-seq...done
Loading regexp-opt...done
Loading easy-mmode...done
Loading edmacro...done
Loading derived...done
Loading byte-opt...done
Loading cl-extra...done
Loading hyperspec-addon (source)...done
For information about the GNU Project and its goals, type C-h C-p.


A side effect is that I really appreciate the versioning filesystems
idea now.  Thanks for your post Dan.

TIA

-- 
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly fine.