Re: How to disable auto save on Emacs 26.1

[Skip Montanaro]

> If your concern is file system clutter, better leave auto-save alone.
> It's not going to clutter your file system (unless something else is
> going horribly wrong). As for backup, you can disable it or even teach
> it to use one directory for all backups (I have typically something
> beneath my ~/.emacs.d).

Coming a bit late to the game... Adding to Tomás's point, if you want
to eliminate backup files, don't just disable it. Replace it with a
proper version control system of some sort. Think of backup files (I
generally use numeric backups to actually retain more than one old
copy - more clutter!) as a defense against shooting yourself in the
foot. A version control system does that, only better. Tools like Git
or Mercurial make it trivial to create and manage little repositories
("git init" creates a new repo in the current directory, for example).
You need not push changes to a central server if you don't care to.
The elements in the filesystem which support the repository will
generally be invisible to the casual glance (hiding as directories
with leading dots on Unix-type systems). Most are well-integrated with
Emacs, so you can manage commits and other activities directly from
within Emacs (I use the vc package). Furthermore, once Emacs knows a
version control system has your back, it stops saving those
(pesky-to-you) backup files.

I apologize if this is all old hat. I wanted to make sure you
understood that backup files serve a valuable purpose (as do their big
brethren, version control systems). I suspect most folks reading this
mailing list have been thankful for this feature on more than one
occasion.

Skip