Subject: bug#32226: shadowfile test failures

From: Michael Albinus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2018 17:19:55 +0200

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

Hi Eli,

>> Well, the problem is the syntax of local file names on MS Windows, like
>> "c:/DOCUME~1/Zaretzky/LOCALS~1/Temp/shadowfile-testsSe3Hgz". shadowfile
>> uses cluster file names with syntax "/<cluster name>:<local file name>".
>> If the <local file name> starts with a volume letter, the resulting
>> string looks like a remote file name, and shadowfile is confused.
>
> Can convert-standard-filename help?  It will convert any colon except
> the first one to '!'.

That was also my first idea. But it doesn't help:
"/myname:c:/DOCUME~1/Zaretzky/LOCALS~1/Temp/shadowfile-testsSe3Hgz" is
regarded as remote file name due to the colon after the drive letter. I
would need to change the notation of cluster file names, something
different from "/name:local name". This would introduce much more
incompatibility for all other shadoefile users. And again, I'm convinced
there hasn't been a shadowfile user on MS Windows ever.

>> Fixing this is not trivial. Is it worth to do it? Again, I doubt that
>> shadowfile has worked ever on MS Windows; I believe it would be
>> sufficient to document this restriction.
>
> It's up to you.  If fixing is indeed hard, I'd hate to get in the way
> of your development of threaded Tramp ;-)

I guess best would be to document this restriction. We can still react,
when furious bug reports arrive us. Which I doubt.

I will add (skip-unless (not (memq system-type '(windows-nt ms-dos))))
to all shadowfile-tests tests in the emacs-26 branch.