Re: Risky local variable mechanism

[Chong Yidong]

"Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> writes:

> A few days ago I sent a message about possibly replacing the risky
> local variable mechanism with something safer.  Nobody has responded
> yet.  This problem is important; please help me think about the issue.

If you want to be really restrictive, you can introduce a list of
`safe-local-variables', and prompt for anything outside that list (the
prompt could have an additional choice, [(a) always allow this
variable], a variable to the list).

Setting `enable-local-variables' to (e.g.) 'unless-risky could bring
back the old behavior, i.e., allowing everything except those marked
as risky.

It seems like people only actually use a handful of file variables,
anyway.  From looking at the source trees of Emacs and some other
projects, the file local variables in use are:

allout-layout
byte-compile-dynamic
byte-compile-warnings
c-basic-offset
c-indent-level
coding
compile-command
fill-column
fill-prefix
indent-tabs-mode
kept-new-versions
make-backup-files
mode
outline-layout
page-delimiter
paragraph-separate
sentence-end
sentence-end-double-space
sgml-omittag
sgml-shorttag
sgml-minimize-attributes
sgml-always-quote-attributes
sgml-indent-step
sgml-indent-data
sgml-parent-document
sgml-exposed-tags
sgml-local-catalogs
sgml-local-ecat-files
tab-width
time-stamp-end
time-stamp-format
time-stamp-start
trim-versions-without-asking
version-control