Re: master 83e0442139f: There are no file modes on windows and dos

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org>
> Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2023 11:21:05 +0800
> 
> Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > branch: master
> > commit 83e0442139f8dbe5b9b3f19e0d1850ab43cf034f
> > Author: Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org>
> > Commit: Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org>
> >
> >     There are no file modes on windows and dos
> >     
> >     * lisp/ls-lisp.el (ls-lisp-verbosity): Add `modes` on GNU & Unix
> >       (ls-lisp-format): When `modes` is not in `ls-lisp-verbosity',
> >        keep just the 1st character of `drwxrwxrwx`.
> 
> Thanks, but your ChangeLog entry is improperly formatted.  In the
> future, please refrain from indenting subsequent entries or continuing
> lines, use grave or straight quotes, and terminate each entry with a
> sentence stop.  For example:
> 
> * lisp/ls-lisp.el (ls-lisp-verbosity): Add `modes' on GNU and
> Unix systems.
> (ls-lisp-format): When `modes' is not in `ls-lisp-verbosity',
> retain only the first character of `drwxrwxrwx'.

I have much more serious issues with this change: it is an
incompatible change in a long-standing behavior, which AFAIR was never
discussed.  Worse, it loses information: files that are read-only
(something that _is_ supported on Windows) are no longer marked as
unwritable, and executable files (not marked as such in the
filesystem, but still a clearly existing attribute that we support) is
not shown as such, either.

I think if anything, this should (a) show 3-4 letters instead of just
d or dash, i.e. drwx for a writable directory, -r-- for read-only
files, -rwx for writable and executable files, etc; and (b) be an
opt-in behavior, i.e. we need a new defcustom for it.  In its current
form, this change is not acceptable, sorry (and neither is the way of
installing it without any discussion).