Re: TRAMP corrupting files (it's OS X's fault)

[Michael Albinus]

Daniel Colascione <danc@merrillpress.com> writes:

> On Tuesday 26 May 2009, Michael Albinus wrote:
>> Tramp cannot solve the problem, as said. But it might be worth to know,
>> that Tramp supports the `file-precious-flag' variable. If it is set to
>> `t', Tramp signals an error, when the remote file is corrupted during
>> copying.
>
> Why does file-precious-flag even exist? Isn't the behavior you get
> when it's t the behavior you *always* want when the combination of the
> various backup-by-* variables allows it?

Yes, you can have the same effect with backup-by-* variables. If you
read the code of backup-buffer, you see

      (if (or file-precious-flag
              backup-by-copying
              (and backup-by-copying-when-linked
                   (> (file-nlinks real-file-name) 1))
              (and (or backup-by-copying-when-mismatch
                       (integerp backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch))
              ...

I believe, there are historical reasons for the existence of that
variable. Tramp just has occupied the variable because it exists,
avoiding introduction of another customer option.

Best regards, Michael.