Re: Proposed patch: allow user to disable lockfile creation

[Dave Abrahams]

on Thu Jul 28 2011, Tim Cross <theophilusx-AT-gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems that the issue isn't really about conflict detection per se,
> but rather how emacs implements it via symlinks. 

It's actually more than that.  The scheme is simultaneously
over-cautious and yet full of holes.  It's predicated on the idea that
everybody who might touch the file simultaneously is using Emacs, but
that's obviously a fallacy.  Any program that doesn't respect Emacs'
convention and look for the lock file (e.g. every command-line tool in
existence) will happily write the file even when I have a lock on it.
Furthermore, Emacs is perfectly capable of telling me when that has
happened before I save... at least it seems to work pretty darned
reliably.  So I think this feature made sense once upon a time but is
now just a vestigial flipper.

Am I missing something?  I could be.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com