Subject: Re: bug#79253: Add timestamps to *Messages*

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2025 14:32:55 +0300

> Cc: [email-masked]
> From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
> Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2025 22:45:46 -0400
> 
>   > I am trying to debug a Tramp problem, and I need associate Tramp debug
>   > log entries with entries in the *Messages* buffer.
> 
> Ordinary Emacs editing is sequential and only the order matters.
> For people like me, whi do that, timestamps would be unhelpful clutter.
> So if we implement timestamps, there should be an easy way to turn them off.

They will be opt-in, of course, if we decide to implement this.

> Or an easy way to specify which messages should have timestamps.
> Perhaps with a list of regexps that gives timestamps to a message
> if it matches any of those regexps.

That could be an idea, but I'm afraid that predicting the important
messages in advance is difficult to say the least.  So there's a
significant chance the important ones will be missed.  For a debugging
aid, this is a significant disadvantage, IME.  It's like debugging
with GDB with a breakpoint randomly succeeding and failing to stop the
program.