Re: How to disable auto save on Emacs 26.1

[James K. Lowden]

On Thu, 4 Oct 2018 07:55:45 -0500
Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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).

Yeah, no.  The operative word is "manage".  Backups happen
automatically; version control happens intentionally.  Who wants to
execute "add" and "commit" all day long, just in case?  

Most files don't need or want management.  The very last thing you need
is a copy of your .profile from 1992, but it well might be handy to
have .profile~ when .profile gets overwritten by mistake.  

There are better answers, although of course Unix is immune to them.
VMS had automatic, numbered backups for all files.  How many was
controlled by properties on the directory by default, or explicitly of
the file. The command-line shell syntax supported acting on "the
file" (the latest version) by default, or on all versions.  I never
remember anyone complaining the system was too complicated or hard to
understand.  

--jkl