Subject: Re: bug#44273: "total used in directory 19 available 5.2 GiB"

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2020 13:29:53 +0100

Mattias Engdegård <[email-masked]> writes:

> Perhaps what Andreas meant is what since Dired is defined in terms of
> the behaviour of the 'ls' command it runs, and users can specify
> arbitrary command-line switches, we cannot really change much of it.

Sure we can, as long as there's an upgrade path.  We deprecate, say,
dired-ls-sorting-switches but introduce a new, Lisp-ey variable that
does the same (and provides reasonable defaults by looking at and
interpreting the obsolete variable).

> More likely we should consider Dired a lost cause that cannot be fixed
> because of its design, and write a modern alternative.
> That would have many benefits, including not being tied to a
> particular output format just for the sake of tradition.
> Presumably that is what you meant by new-dired?

No -- there are several alternative file browsers in Emacs.  What
matters is the default one, because that's the one with an approximately
infinite number of open bug reports that can't realistically be fixed,
and that's dired.

I think it's feasible to rewrite dired to be sane without breaking too
much stuff -- not a 100% drop in replacement, but close enough that most
people won't notice (except that it would have fewer bugs).

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no