Re: executable-find in files.el

[Richard Stallman]

    But during migrating existing packages, the drawback has
    been obvious: Everywhere there is the need of checking a command for
    being remote or not, and then to call `process-file' or
    `call-process'.

I can't see why you did that.  If in a certain call you want
the file name handler to be used, you can unconditionally call
process-file.  Why didn't you do that?

    If `call-process' would be able to handle remote
    commands, most of the cases nothing would be needed to be changed -
    the existing code would simply work. And the same for `start-process'.

This would be an incompatible change, and I am not convinced it is
correct or meaningful.  The definition of call-process is that it runs
the command you specified.  I does not seem right for the mere choice
of default-directory should have such a major effect on call-process.

Conceptually, process-file is different.

    And the same for `start-process'.

Likewise the mere default-directory should not have such a drastic
effect on start-process.  If we have a facility to start a process
on a possibly-remote machine, we should specify it differently.
Perhaps with a new function start-remote-process that has a new arg
that says which machine.  When that arg is nil, it would be equivalent
to start-process.