Re: Obsolence of rlogin.el

[Kalman Reti]

On Mar 21, 2018 12:04 PM, "Michael Albinus" <address@hidden> wrote:

Kalman Reti <address@hidden> writes:

Hi Kalman,

First of all let me say, that I don't intend to damage anybody's
workflow. That's why I have asked here.

> I use it every day with rlogin-program set to a non-default ssh client
> (which isn't suitable for other ssh uses, e.g. in tramp), so I would
> be sad if it went away.

That's not completely true. It isn't documented in Tramp how to use an
alternative ssh client, but it's possible. So pls give me some
information how this ssh client is invoked, and we'll find out how to
configure this in Tramp. (And I should document this finally,
long-lasting point from my TODO.)

> Using shell with the default directory couples the remote execution
> with remote file access which I find undesirable.

That I don't understand. Which kind of remote file access do you have in
mind? We're speaking 'bout rlogin, which opens a remote shell, and let
you enter shell commands.

> It is not very performant in the environments I use to access remote
> files via tramp. Using rlogin, I can do m-x cd to set the default
> directory for the rlogin buffer to a local (i.e. on the machine
> running emacs) path of the same filesystem I am using on the remote
> machine. In this case tracking of directory changes works correctly
> but I also have fast (local) tab completion and file opening.

But in this case I fail to understand what rlogin is good for you. If
you access local files, you don't need this.

Maybe you could give me a short scenario how you work with rlogin?

I build and test a single set of sources on a dozen different platforms; each platform copies its sources from a 'master' sandbox (so I am certain all have the exact same sources).

I have elisp code that generates a dozen rlogin buffers (to all the platforms) and other functions which send commands to all of them and analyze what comes back, e.g. build or test failures. If I have to make changes, I make them to files in the 'master' sandbox which resides on a shared filesystem (either nfs or samba, depending upon whether my emacs is running on linux or windows) that is local as far as emacs is concerned. The hierarchy of files in the sandboxes on the various machines mirrors the hierarchy of that master sandbox, so I m-x cd the corresponding master patch to each rlogin buffer, so opening a source file opens the corresponding master source file, not the one in the remote sandbox. Tab completion of common files works because I only do relative cd'ing inside each of the shells. If I need to look at a generated file on the remote machine, I explicitly provide the host name, but that's fairly rare. It is important to me that if I open a file while the current buufer is any of the remote rlogin buffers, I get the canonical file from the master sandbox (which may already have been open previously). I don't know how to get this effect using tramp and/or remote shell buffers. 

Best regards, Michael.