Subject: Re: bug#13151: 24.2; tramp with ido: enters self-killing loop when opening /ftp: and hitting enter.

From: Michael Albinus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:00:29 +0100

Arne Babenhauserheide <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hi Michael,

Hi Arne,

>> You have tried to save your file on the machine "ftp", using ssh to
>> connect there. Is that what you intend?
>
> That is not what I intended. I wanted to connect to
> /ftp:user:password@ftpserver, but decided to just try confirming to
> see if tramp would then show me the previously used ftp-logins (I had
> forgotten my ftp-username and wanted to avoid looking it up :) ).

<TAB> should have worked better for username completion, not <RET>.

> Since that led to finding a bug, I don’t regret it :)

I'm not sure it is a bug what you have detected. Ido and Tramp have
exactly done what you have asked for. <RET> is bound to
`ido-exit-minibuffer' (i.e., you have completed file name
insertion). And ido has even asked you to confirm this. What else do you
expect?

>> Anyway, I could reproduce the problem locally, when ido-mode is
>> enabled. 
>
> Great! Thanks for checking!

During these tests, I have found another error in recursive loading of
Tramp modules, which has been introduced recently. This one I could fix.

For the bug report, I believe I cannot do anything else. So I would like
to close it, if you don't oppose.

>> I have seen in the past that ido makes some strange things with
>> Tramp, calling internal functions which haven't been published
>> publicly. Maybe it's time to clean up.
>
> That would be cool! Ido and tramp together are a really nice team, but
> there are some rough edges which make them dangerous to recommend to
> new users…

I've checked ido.el for occurences of Tramp functions. (last time I did
was years ago). Now, there is not too much about Tramp interna usage. I
would propose to apply `file-remote-p' instead of checking for regexps,
but this might be personal taste. And I would discourage people to apply
`tramp-ftp-file-name-p'; I don't understand why ftp must be handled
differently. I have no other proposal what to change; ido's internal
mechanery seems to work well wrt remote files.

> Best wishes,
> Arne

Best regards, Michael.