VC's modeline (was: [Emacs-diffs] master de76a16: Performance improvements for vc-hg)

[Stefan Monnier]

> vc has been in place for decades, and is one of the things that makes
> programming on Emacs pleasant. I'm not in favor of just removing the
> feature because there are a few unfixed bugs. There is nothing
> fundamentally wrong with the model.

Agreed.

What I think is wrong the level of detail expected in the status line.
E.g. I think it'd be fine for VC to just display "Bzr" (or "Hg", or
"Git", or what have you) instead.  I think it'd even be fine to do that
without checking whether the file is really under that VCS's control or
not (i.e. without checking whether the file is ignored).  IOW, a file
opened in a directory with a ".git" somewhere in the parents could just
say "Git", without any other check.

> There is no reason that vc integration can't work well and be on by
> default.

Having to call a "git" process twice per find-file-noselect is a high
price for a very small benefit.

> It was working before my change; now it works better.

Yes, I'm really not arguing against your change.

> A reasonable performance improvement should not be an occasion for
> discussing the removal of a feature made faster.

Sorry.  It just reminded me of this problem that's been around for a while.


        Stefan