GNU Info

(tramp)Issues

---

Prev: Files directories and localnames Up: Top

---

Enter node , (file) or (file)node

Debatable Issues and What Was Decided
*************************************

   * The uuencode method does not always work.

     Due to the design of TRAMP, the encoding and decoding programs
     need to read from stdin and write to stdout.  On some systems,
     `uudecode -o -' will read stdin and write the decoded file to
     stdout, on other systems `uudecode -p' does the same thing.  But
     some systems have uudecode implementations which cannot do this at
     all--it is not possible to call these uudecode implementations
     with suitable parameters so that they write to stdout.

     Of course, this could be circumvented: the `begin foo 644' line
     could be rewritten to put in some temporary file name, then
     `uudecode' could be called, then the temp file could be printed and
     deleted.

     But I have decided that this is too fragile to reliably work, so
     on some systems you'll have to do without the uuencode methods.

   * TRAMP does not work on XEmacs 20.

     This is because it requires the macro `with-timeout' which does not
     appear to exist in XEmacs 20.  I'm somewhat reluctant to add an
     emulation macro to TRAMP, but if somebody who uses XEmacs 20 steps
     forward and wishes to implement and test it, please contact me or
     the mailing list.

   * The TRAMP filename syntax differs between Emacs and XEmacs.

     The Emacs maintainers wish to use a unified filename syntax for
     Ange-FTP and TRAMP so that users don't have to learn a new syntax.
     It is sufficient to learn some extensions to the old syntax.

     For the XEmacs maintainers, the problems caused from using a
     unified filename syntax are greater than the gains.  The XEmacs
     package system uses EFS for downloading new packages.  So,
     obviously, EFS has to be installed from the start.  If the
     filenames were unified, TRAMP would have to be installed from the
     start, too.