Subject: Re: bug#58919: 28.2; dired-copy-file-recursive fails to overwrite directory

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 15:01:47 +0200

merge 58919 58918
thanks

> From: Thierry Volpiatto <[email-masked]>
> Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:54:28 +0000
> 
> 
> This is a followup of this report on reddit:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/yha104/merging_directories_in_dired_am_i_doing_it_wrong/

Which was already reported as bug#58918...

> When using dired-copy to copy a directory to another directory
> containing a directory with the same name overwriting fails.
> e.g. copy ~/tmp/test/foo/ to ~/tmp/test1/ fails when test1 contain foo/
> 
> The bug is IMHO in copy-directory 3th clause of this cond:
> 
> (cond ((not (directory-name-p newname))
>        ;; If NEWNAME is not a directory name, create it;
>        ;; that is where we will copy the files of DIRECTORY.
>        (make-directory newname parents))
>       ;; NEWNAME is a directory name.  If COPY-CONTENTS is non-nil,
>       ;; create NEWNAME if it is not already a directory;
>       ;; otherwise, create NEWNAME/[DIRECTORY-BASENAME].
>       ((if copy-contents
> 	   (or parents (not (file-directory-p newname)))
> 	 (setq newname (concat newname
> 			       (file-name-nondirectory directory))))
>        (make-directory (directory-file-name newname) parents))
>       (t (setq follow t)))
> 
> This change was introduced here:
> 
> commit 047f02f00f602b9aef63ae8938e12f3f0ab481eb
> Author: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
> Date:   Wed Sep 20 11:49:12 2017 -0700
> 
>     Fix new copy-directory bug with empty dirs
>     
>     Problem reported by Afdam Plaice (Bug#28520) and by Eli Zaretskii
>     (Bug#28483#34).  This is another bug that I introduced in my
>     recent copy-directory changes.
>     * lisp/files.el (copy-directory): Work with empty subdirectories, too.
>     * test/lisp/files-tests.el (files-tests--copy-directory):
>     Test for this bug.
> 
> Reverting this change fix the bug.

Paul, could you please look into this?

I think this also affects bug#58721.

Thanks.