Re: url library and GnuTLS, and Emacs-issued certificates

[Chong Yidong]

Tom Tromey <address@hidden> writes:

> Ted> I also explicitly mention that file: URLs should be directory names
> Ted> even though it's implicit otherwise because I guarantee you, people
> Ted> will try it anyhow.
>
> Tom> I don't deeply care, but I think if something is documented as
> Tom> using URLs, then it is fine to just require them.
>
> Chong> It's better not to allow file:// URLs here, because then we
> Chong> have to deal with URL quoting for filenames.
>
> I don't understand.  Does the URL package not handle this?

I assume what you're proposing is to require file:// URLs, instead of
ordinary file names, for the locations in `package-archives'.

The problem with that is that everywhere else in Emacs where we let
users specify file names, we use "ordinary" Emacs file names.  It would
be inconvenient for users to require them to remember how to do URL
quoting if they want to specify a local directory for this particular
variable.

If what you meant, instead, was that we should support file:// URLs in
*addition* to ordinary file names, I guess there is no harm doing that,
as long as we allow ordinary file names too.