Re: igrep on remote files with tramp?

[Daniel Berdine]

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:28:54 -0400, Kevin Rodgers wrote
(in article <mailman.1998.1122579165.20277.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>):

> Daniel Berdine wrote:
>  > I need to work with files on a remote server, and tramp so far has
>  > seemed the best way to get the job done. However, I would very much like
>  > to be able to use the igrep functions, in particular dired-do-igrep, in
>  > this context. Unfortunately, igrep doesn't seem to know how to use
>  > tramp. Looking at igrep.el (2.112), there appears to be at least some
>  > support of ange-ftp built in. Does there exist a version of igrep.el
>  > that knows about tramp as well as/instead of ange? Or, does anyone know
>  > of any other way to make it work? My Google searches so far turn up
>  > zilch.
> 
> igrep only supports ange-ftp (and efs) to the extent that the
> igrep-visited-files and Buffer-menu-igrep commands explicitly ignore
> remote files.
> 
> To properly support remote files, igrep would need to invoke the grep
> command in a remote shell.  I know there has been discussion about
> whether Emacs should implement process handlers, so that tramp could run
> programs on a remote host when invoked from a buffer visiting a remote
> file.  But I don't know what was decided and implemented (if anything).

Ok, thanks.

I'm obviously ignorant here, but why is this so different than, say, 
incremental searches across several remote files with tramp? Can't a local 
igrep be run on the local tmp files that get used for so many other purposes?
In any case, being able to run remote processes with tramp would be great. 
I've frequently wished I could do this with gdb within emacs, for instance.

Thanks again for the information,
-Dan