Subject: Re: bug#63870: 29.0.90; project.el can't dynamically populate the project list

From: Dmitry Gutov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 04:57:15 +0300

On 18/07/2023 19:28, Spencer Baugh wrote:

>>> But that's MO; please wait for Dmitry to chime in.
>>
>> [ Sorry for the late response, I'm still uncertain about this patch. ]
>>
>> (*) ... and ask whether this functionality makes sense built-in.
>>
>> I appreciate that it's succinct, documented and doesn't take a lot of
>> space. But would we say that it covers a significantly general use
>> case? Do we know many other developers who would appreciate it? Do a
>> lot of devs at Jane Street use Emacs and this same workflow? Should we
>> ask people somewhere (emacs-devel/Reddit/etc) whether they will find
>> it useful?
> 
> It's something we'd use a lot, but I have no problem keeping it locally
> for now.  I agree it has some dangers, maybe I'll come up with a good
> way to make it safe for the casual user.

Thank you.

>> If it's just for one user at this point, then it shouldn't be
>> difficult to maintain this code inside the init dir.
>>
>> Here's also some alternative I could potentially suggest: if you have
>> some code which checks out new branches for development, or projects
>> to start work on, and it's written in Elisp too, could it just call
>> project-remember-project at the end? That would circumvent the need
>> for using file watches altogether.
> 
> That works great for stuff written in Elisp too, but alas, there are
> command line tools to check out branches for development, etc, and I
> want them to update Emacs too.

Just something to consider: you could invoke those shell scripts from 
Emacs Lisp, and then they finish, the Lisp program could do some 
additional steps, like adding projects to the list. Or removing -- in 
the reverse case.