bug#18693: 25.0.50; backup user options

[Stefan Kangas]

tags 18693 + wontfix
close 18693
thanks

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> There are several user options for customizing file backups
> (`backup-by-*').  Wading through the doc strings or Customize buffers
> for them, it seems that they could all be consolidated under option
> `make-backup-files', by letting different non-nil values provide the
> different backup behaviors.
>
> To be clear: I really don't care about this.  Consider it feedback that
> it seems that Emacs is making things unnecessarily complicated for
> users, here, and it should be possible to do things better.  If no one
> wants to do that, fine.

Thanks for this feature request.

As far as I can tell we have the following options:

    backup-by-copying
      User option: Non-nil means always use copying to create backup
                   files.
    backup-by-copying-when-linked
      User option: Non-nil means use copying to create backups for files
                   with multiple names.
    backup-by-copying-when-mismatch
      User option: Non-nil means create backups by copying if this
                   preserves owner or group.
    backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch
      User option: Non-nil means create backups by copying to preserve a
                   privileged owner.
    backup-directory-alist
      User option: Alist of file name patterns and backup directory names.
    backup-enable-predicate
      Variable: Predicate that looks at a file name and decides whether to
                make backups.
    backup-inhibited
      Variable: If non-nil, backups will be inhibited.

All in all, I don't think it is too bad.  The options clearly express
what they do, and they seem orthogonal to each other.

> Also, things have been like this since at least Emacs 20, and users
> already have various `backup-by-*' options in their custom or init
> files.  So if this were simplified then some remapping/aliasing would
> need to happen.

More importantly, and as you correctly observe, creating a consolidated
variable, even if it is a good idea (maybe it is), would lead to a lot
of user configurations breaking or needing updating.  So on balance, I
don't think this is worth spending time on or doing, and I'm therefore
closing this bug report.