Re: Managing environments (Python venv, guix environment, etc.)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden
> Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2016 13:59:33 -0400
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> > It may seem to you that remote access is similar to a different
> > environment, but in fact they are very different.  Environment is not
> > a property of a file name, it is a property of a project.
> 
> Environment is not a property of a project either, it's something else
> entirely. A project doesn't necessarily have an environment associated
> with it, and an environment isn't necessarily asociated with a
> project.

Then perhaps it's time to clarify what an environment really is?  I
don't think that has been done in this discussion; if I missed
something, please point that out.

> If we embed the environment into the file name, then the environment
> also becomes a property of a file name.

But since an environment is not a property of a file name, doing that
would be a mistake, it seems.

> > Moreover, past attempts I know about to use file handlers for
> > processing local files turned out to have subtle misfeatures.
> 
> I would be interested to see previous failed attempts to use file
> handlers on local files, can you point me to an example?

cygwin-mount, for one.

> AFAIK jka-compr.el works fine.

Because it takes great care not to touch anything that changes the
semantics of file names: the file name still behaves the same with and
without jka-compr.  By contrast, AFAIU environments cannot do that by
their very nature.

> Anyway, isn't the file-name handler interface a generic way to abstract
> over access to the underlying operating system, not just a method for
> implementing remote-access?

No.

> Wouldn't a change that caused file-name handlers to be only usable
> for remote acces, be a bug?

Yes, but the best way of fixing a bug is to avoid it in the first
place.