Re: Patch: use GNU readlink --canonicalize for file-truename when available

[Michael Albinus]

Julian Scheid <address@hidden> writes:

>> Hmm. We have already dependencies on Perl. Another one from Python - I
>> fear, that initial checks for existence of several programs on the
>> remote host will grow and grow.
>
> Yary's suggestion to do the same thing with Perl is better of course,
> seeing that Perl is already checked for (and it's still more
> ubiquitous than Python.)

That's why I've added it immediately :-) We should have done something
like this years ago.

> However, generally speaking I'm not sure another remote check would be
> so bad. The presence of a remote tool can be cached very well
> (persistently) and if something can't be achieved with tools that are
> already checked for, with the same performance, then the additional
> check might be well worth it. After all, even without a persistent
> cache the check is only a single remote operation.

In Tramp 2.0, everything was checked "at the beginning". This resulted
in awful startup times. That's why in Tramp 2.1 there is the general
policy of "delayed checks" - do everything when it is necessary, and not
earlier.

Best regards, Michael.