Subject: bug#75910: 31; Deprecate minibuffer-completing-file-name

From: Michael Albinus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2025 13:10:17 +0100

Daniel Mendler <[email-masked]> writes:

Hi Daniel,

>> I don't understand what's the glaring argument for removing that
>> variable. IIRC, it was requested already a while ago, and this was
>> rejected. What's the change now for doing so?
>
> Can you please point to the relevant discussion? The last time I have
> talked with Stefan Monnier about this variable, the plan was still to
> deprecate this variable in the longer term, with the goal of use the
> completion category as a unifying mechanism.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the discussion just now.

But the question remains: What is the benefit removing (deprecating)
this variable?

Furthermore, I don't know the mechanism of completion categories. Is it
guaranteed, that it also works when we're not inside read-file-name? The
advantage of minibuffer-completing-file-name is, that it alwas returns
nil or non-nil, even if there's no active file name completion. Tramp
would require a similar indication, being called inside any completion,
or not. Your proposed replacement, minibuffer-category-p, seems to check
the contents of the minibuffer, which is not relevant for Tramp in general.

>>> Daniel

Best regards, Michael.