Subject: Re: bug#70593: 30.0.50; Dired: buffers of renamed dirs are broken

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2024 08:32:55 +0300

> From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 22:45:00 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > So all we need to do is call expand-file-name on both of them?  Or do
> > we need also to call file-truename?
> 
> When symlinks are involved it gets really messy.
> 
> For example: here is an additional problem I encountered:
> `dired-rename-subdir' sometimes doesn't even handle our buffer because
> `dired-fun-in-all-buffers', which is built on `dired-buffers-for-dir',
> doesn't consider symlinks at all: For `dired-buffers-for-dir' a buffer
> that visits some DIR under a different name is simply not visiting DIR.
> 
> Other problems are: our buffer could visit a file under a now dead link.
> The file renamed could have been moved from behind a link to some
> completely unrelated place.  Our buffer could dired a subdirectory of a
> renamed directory (this case is currently completely ignored).
> 
> I feel a bit lost.  Fixing this would be nice, at least the cases where
> this is possible, but it's really complicated and I don't even know the
> dired code very well.

We could document that renaming a directory that is a symlink is
currently not supported, and move on.  Someone who is motivated enough
could come up with patches to fix that later.

Is there some narrower problem you'd like to fix there at this time
and know how to do that?  If so, feel free to install such a narrower
fix.

Thanks.