Subject: Re: bug#66903: 29.1; shell-mode directory tracking incorrectly handles double slashes

From: Allen Li <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2023 00:22:26 -0700

On Fri, Nov 3, 2023 at 12:16 AM Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> "M-x shell" is not a shell, it is an Emacs interface to a shell.
> Thus, it should be free to implement behavior not present in the
> shell, if we consider it convenient for Emacs users.
>

The behavior it is supposed to implement is that it tracks the working
directory of the shell.
Currently, it fails to do so for most shells that a user would use.
In fact, it fails to do so for the default value `/bin/bash`.

> > It looks like this should be fixed in `shell-cd` (which should also fix
> > `shell-process-pushd`) by implementing "custom" path handling (compared
> > to Emacs default path handling behavior).
>
> This is not a bug.  I'm okay with adding a new optional feature that
> would disable the above behavior, but it must be off by default.
>

This is absolutely a bug.  The feature, where shell-mode attempts to track
the working
directory of its subshell, fails to work for most shells in existence
(e.g., derivatives of POSIX sh, csh, zsh, etc.) and including the default
shell.

I agree it may be an option, but I disagree that it should be off by
default, given that the
default configured shell Bash requires it.