Re: Reconsider make-backup-files default value

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>
> Cc: Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com>,  petterih@iki.fi,
>   jeremy@baxters.nz,  james.ipswich@proton.me,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2024 09:10:13 +0300
> 
> >> Something I have wondered about for a while is why the kept-old-versions
> >> default is 2 instead of 1. It makes sense of course that you would want
> >> to keep, e.g., the original (template) version of a config file, but what
> >> is special about the first revision you made to it?
> >
> > If you start from an empty file, the first version is frequently not
> > useful.
> 
> Is it possible not to create a backup for a new empty file?

I don't think we have such a feature, no.

> Because empty backups are useless.

Not always useless, but in most cases, yes.

The first backup is also not useful in other cases: when you start
from a copy of another file, or from something very short.

So I think there's some sense in the current default value of
kept-old-versions.