> — Sensible file handling: backups and auto-saves in a cache/ directory, recentf for recent files, clean buffer naming with uniquify
It's crazy to me how out of the box when you edit nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foo it creates another file foo~ there and nginx tries to load that too
When I tried to ask emacs reddit community they started attacking me for changing the default that only I need and fits everyone perfectly.
Still can't believe I'm the only one finding that default amazingly bad.
> The ~foo as backup convention is not part of any standard.
Emacs does foo~ by default, not ~foo.
In either case, you're not really supposed to edit files in sites-enabled. That directory is expected to contain symlinks to files in sites-available. I'm not going to say with any certainty that one of the reasons for this indeed is that the pattern (which was used by apache as well - and perhaps other things before it) protects against accidentally reading backup files, but it's not impossible.
So there's definitely a case of holding it wrong if you end up with backup files in that directory.
I liked doing symlinks so the site configuration is with the rest of the site, but that was before containers when it was common to host a bunch of sites on one instance apache or nginx.
> The ~foo as backup convention is not part of any standard.
> [...]
> It's the second thing I fix in either Vim or Emacs: Put backup files in a central location. (The first is proper indentation/spacing rules.)
Perhaps not a standard, but you yourself admit it's the default behavior.
Though I agree that the simple mechanism acts ... er,... simply, shouldn't it be at the very least aware of the default behavior of common editors?
But it DID contribute to the conversation ... it corrected an error/misunderstanding. If I didn't think I was contributing, I wouldn't have commented. You seem to have a different ethic.
I won't comment further, as we are now off topic (thanks to you).
Surprised to hear people told you not to change that - one of the earliest bits of advice I got on using emacs is to set the location of those files to a hidden directory in your home folder.
I was proposing to make default where those files are not created, since Emacs is actually surprisingly great out of the box with no configuration, except for this "little" thing. Apparrently, some people believe it's perfect as it is
I tell emacs to create all of the files in "~/.backups", and it names them using the full pathname with "/" replaced with "!". So "~/foo/bar.txt" -> "!home!username!foo!bar.txt~"
I also set create-lockfiles to nil. I think you can theoretically keep the lockfiles and the clean directory by using lock-file-name-transforms to place the lockfiles somewhere sensible but I didn't bother.
Without this I had to be careful not to acciddentally commit stuff like ".#filename.txt".
(n)vim can also do this, if you've set up an ssh alias in your ssh config for your multi-hop destination you just list it where the hostname would go. e.g.
nvim scp://remotemachine/.config/emacs/init.el
For the same reason you can use sshfs, sftp, and rsync with multi-hop. Gotta love openssh!
> The list of things emacs users don't get seems to get...
There are a ton of Emacs users, and it's doesn't make much sense to talk about them as a group like that, no more than if I were to say, "The list of things Windows users don't get..."
using the same directory drastically reduces the amount of assumptions about your system's permissions and your own installation (or lack thereof)
old school *nix editors typically do something like emacs and vi typically do, whereas old WinDOS/Mac single-user systems would have an installation file and a cache system-wide, and post NT and OS-X they have roughly the same but in a centralised user directory that is not system-wide, but is located as if it were (different evolution path)
I just realized that `apt install emacs-nox` is a great editor in containers and VMs. I just have to disable it every damn time (for regular and root user). Defaults would be better.
I don't mean to be condescending, but since you just learned about emacs-nox... If you haven't already, try tramp mode to edit files in containers and VMs. It also lets you edit local files using sudo.
There's also a docker package for managing containers - similar concept and UI to magit, but for managing Docker. Not as life changing as magit, but convenient.
Anyway, the problem with changing the default after all this time is that everybody would want the new default to be different, and changing it now would meaning breaking things for long time users who depend on the current default. And TBH if you're setting up a container and installing Emacs, it's very little extra work to copy over a .emacs file that fixes everything the way you like.
It can be handy. It gives you an additional safety net on top of the VCS that runs automatically in the background. It doesn't take much to configure it to your liking, e.g. [1].
The kids really have no idea how tenuous computing in general was back in the olden days. Some of the stability issues in the 20th century translated to modern systems would be akin to black smoke coming out of your computer if you happened to have the wrong two programs running at the same time.
I am no kid but screen(1) dates back to 1987 and any wise sysadmin would put that advice on every ~/.login or /etc/motd so the user could run 'screen' at login, some keybinding to detach screen(1) and 'screen -r' on coming back by telnet.
I never used screen back in the day (I was primarily a VMS guy then), but that man page is one of the best-written man pages I’ve come across: informative, friendly and just the right level of detail.
I do too, it’s just that I’ve realised that emacs-nox is awesome container / vm editor out of the box, this backup thing is the only most annoying part (and Ubuntu 22.04 emacs packages expired cert)
It's crazy to me how out of the box when you edit nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foo it creates another file foo~ there and nginx tries to load that too
When I tried to ask emacs reddit community they started attacking me for changing the default that only I need and fits everyone perfectly.
Still can't believe I'm the only one finding that default amazingly bad.