Subject: bug#76769: 31.0.50; marking inconsistency between VC-Dir and dired-vc-next-action

From: Dmitry Gutov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 22:08:11 +0200

On 15/03/2025 09:30, Sean Whitton wrote:

>> That one sounds a little odd, doesn't it? Marking something would be expected
>> to extend the set of files acted upon, and here it the opposite.
> 
> I see what you mean, but I'd argue it's still the most useful behaviour,
> especially after a confirmation prompt -- I'll make it clear what's
> going to happen in the prompt, e.g. "Unmark this directory in order to
> mark this single file?"

I've based my response expecting to set the new defcustom to t if the 
behavior makes sense.

Perhaps you have a point that with an extra prompt there's not much 
downside. And the upside, I suppose, is in saving time not having to go 
to the directory node (to "unmark"), or unmarking all the other entries 
under that directory. If the user intent is indeed to keep only some of 
the entries marked, not the whole dir.

The rest of the scenarios you described seem to make sense 
unconditionally, without extra prompt. Or might anyway.

> To put it another way, why would you want to mark that file if the
> directory is already marked?  Either it's an error, and you can just say
> 'n' to the prompt, or it's deliberate and it's because you want to mark
> that file for your next operation, whether or not you've noticed that
> you need to unmark the directory first.

Yeah, IME it might be an error because I would just be going through the 
items in VC-Dir, pressing 'm' to mark one after another - right now it 
ends at the first element after a dir, and it would start to work 
differently.

Anyway, I just wanted to voice a concern. Probably not a big deal, and 
it might help to test the changes in practice for a while.