Re: files.el: Patch to make project-settings optional/customizable

[Stefan Monnier]

>> If you want to change .dir-settings.el, the say so and re-open the
>> discussion about the choice.  But making it customizable is wrong.

> Re-opening the discussion is wrong; it was already discussed and some
> consensus reached (

> Making it user-settable (perhaps, as Chong says, as a variable and not
> a defcustom) is best than trying to second-guess the users.

Do you advocate making "Local Variables:" in hack-local-variables
customizable as well?  If you think one deserves customization, then I'd
argue that the other deserves it just as well.

As far as I can tell, the only reason people want to customize it is
because they find the default choice ugly.  I.e. for purely aesthetic
reasons.  This is a pretty poor justification for introducing complexity
and incompatibilities between projects.

Until someone gives me a good argument for why it should be customizable
(as opposed to having just a different value), we should revert the
patch that made it a defcustom.

As for its name: we're not wedded to it, AFAIK.  It was the result of
a pretty long thread, so it's not going to be easy to find something
else that's more or less consensual.  But for starters, if people could
argue about why it's "ugly", maybe we can tweak it.


        Stefan