Re: Turning on savehist-mode by default

[Po Lu]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Isn't this a general issue with saving any customizations?  E.g.,
> saving options, saving desktop, etc. etc.?  Saving history from Bash,
> GDB, etc. has the same problems, AFAIK.

Yes, and that's one reason I'm glad Emacs isn't Bash!

> And anyway, the problem already exists for those who turn on savehist
> in their customizations.  If your usage patterns must avoid the
> overwriting you mention above, simply disable savehist in your init
> file, and Bob's your uncle.

What about emacs -q, or if an error is signaled by savehist itself on
loading a malformed savehist file, or any other of the myriad of
circumstances that might cause Emacs to start without completely loading
the user initialization file?

> IOW, once again: personal preferences should NOT affect the defaults,
> nor are they too important when discussing those defaults.  Unless the
> feature we want to turn on is buggy (in which case it must be fixed
> first), turning it on by default cannot possibly cause problems we
> don't already have.

These aren't personal preferences.  Running multiple sessions at once is
a feature which Emacs has long supported six ways from Sunday, and it
should continue to work by default.

Hence we should resolve this problem with savehist in advance, if only
to avoid confusing users who do run Emacs in this manner.  This is by no
means all that is necessary to enable savehist-mode by default, of
course; savehist establishes the location of the savehist file when it
is loaded, and loads its history file upon the major mode being enabled,
so this change will certainly be more involved than loading and enabling
savehist-mode during loadup.

Thus with the aforementioned disadvantages on one hand, and all the toil
entailed on the other, is it any wonder that some people are averse to
this proposal?

Just my two cents, thanks.