Re: Risky local variable mechanism

[Stefan Monnier]

> A few days ago I sent a message about possibly replacing the risky
> local variable mechanism with something safer.  Nobody has responded
> yet.  This problem is important; please help me think about the issue.

I rarely use file-local variables, so it's hard for me to figure out which
set of restrictions will be best.  Using custom types sounds like a good
idea, but note that setting "boolean" variables can be dangerous as well
(e.g. enable-local-eval).  I guess we need to play with it a bit.
But if we change the way it works, I think it might be a good idea to make
sure that what we define is "really" safe.  I.e. we only allow some
known-safe variable settings.  Maybe "string and integer custom vars" are
all safe, I don't know.

Otherwise we could simply introduce a "safe-local-variable" property which
we'd add to every variable we decide is safe to set.  Its value could also
be a predicate (instead of just t) to allow finer settings.


        Stefan