Subject: Re: bug#51758: 27.2; Backtrace put in home dir, not current dir

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2022 18:48:24 +0300

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
> Cc: Scott Otterson <[email-masked]>,  [email-masked]
> Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2022 16:52:26 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> >> That's right, I thought that the "current directory" was the
> >> `current-directory'.  Like most people would, I'd
> >> guess.
> >
> > What is your interpretation of current-directory in this case?  Where
> > do you think that is?
> 
> "The value of `current-directory' where the user was when the crash
> happened" would be the natural interpretation.

You mean default-directory, I presume?

The problem, as I explained, is that there's a different one in every
buffer, and there could be many of them.  As far as users are
concerned, Emacs doesn't have a well-defined notion of "current
directory", so saying "where the user was" makes little sense with
Emacs.

> Why not just change the message to "the directory Emacs was started
> from"?  That should be clear.

I'm okay with that, I just fear that many users won't know where that
is.  On MS-Windows, the starting directory can (and usually is)
determined by the desktop shortcut used to start Emacs, and people
rarely are aware where is that.