Subject: bug#31796: 27.1; dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace fails to find multiline regexps

From: Andreas Abel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:49:24 +0100

With a software as old as emacs the most important feature is

   1. backwards-compatibility

The second most important feature is

   2. backwards-compatibility

The third most important feature is

   3. backwards-compatibility

It is like with C and LaTeX.  If you cannot ensure that things keep 
working as they did, don't change anything.

Tramp?  I had to google this term.

How often do programmers work on their local files in their day-to-day 
business, how often with remote files via tramp?

If you contribute a new feature for 0.1% percent of the use cases but 
disrupt something (even minor) for 99.9% of the use cases, then with an 
old tool like emacs the choice is: don't replace the old functionality 
with your new functionality.

Just don't break things.  Please.

If you want fancy functionality that works with remote files, this is 
fine.  There are enough keys on the keyboard you can bind the new 
functionality to.

Please don't break things that worked.

There are gazillion emacs users out there that dread each new emacs 
version because it will break their setup, their workflows, their 
habits.  We do not want to spend days after upgrades to get our work 
environment back.

We value stability and conservativity over everything else.

Thanks to everyone who contributes to emacs.  --Andreas

On 2020-11-23 22:28, Dmitry Gutov wrote:
> On 23.11.2020 11:09, Andreas Abel wrote:
>> - Why isn't the more robust
>>
>>    dired-do-query-replace-regexp
>>
>> bound to Q?
> 
> Which is the "more robust", though? dired-do-query-replace-regexp 
> doesn't work with Tramp. dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace does.
> 
> And even if the former is fixed to work, the latter will work much 
> faster remotely. It's also going to be faster in many "local" cases too.
> 
> If we don't manage to find a portable enough solution to do multiline 
> searches, we could at least warn the user interactively about 
> unsupported features, though.

-- 
Andreas Abel  <><      Du bist der geliebte Mensch.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Chalmers and Gothenburg University, Sweden

[email-masked]
http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~abela/