Subject: Re: bug#23186: closed (Re: bug#23186: 25.0.92; Tramp: Windows does not always set COMSPEC, tramp blows up in a string-match)

From: Michael Albinus <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 21:47:48 +0200

Jerry Asher <[email-masked]> writes:

Hi Jerry,

>> Tramp is designed to work with Emacs as released by the Emacs
>> development team. That Emacs doesn't have this problem. I think it
>> would be unreasonable for anyone to expect the Tramp maintainers to
>> cater to arbitrary changes in the Emacs code or in how it is
>> configured on Windows, let alone if you poke some addresses in the PE
>> headers of the produced binary.
>
> We are ALREADY talking about a very specific setting IN emacs FOR
> Windows. God forbid we should ask the maintainers to discuss how emacs
> is configured on Windows in that context.
>
>> Your fix is AFAIK incorrect because the directory where cmd.exe
>> lives
>> is not necessarily C:\Windows\system32. It just happens to be there
>> on the particular system where you tried that.
>
> And I agree, setting the variable to nil where it is guaranteed to
> blow up, and is reported to do so as my search shows is FAR FAR better
> than finding a reasonable default that will work most of the time.

I'm not interested in any flamewar. Pls stop.

I haven't too much knowledge about MS Windows, and many years of
experience let me trust Eli.

If you are interested in changing Tramp according to your needs, pls be
cooperative. Make a proposal about a config option which could be used
instead of the COMSPEC env which doesn't exist in your environment. Make
a proposal how to avoid calling cmd.exe at all, it seems not be
mandatory, I believe. Propose something else what is possible.

Your first proposal, trusting C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe, hasn't been
accepted, by reasons Eli has given. And indeed, it looks too me like too
much heuristic, so I'm with Eli.

Best regards, Michael.

PS: I am the Tramp maintainer.