GNU bug report logs - #889
23.0.60; "Recover Crashed Session" is misleading

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Message #32 received at 889 <at> emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com (full text, mbox):

From: era+emacsbugs <at> iki.fi
To: 889 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: "Recover Crashed Session" fails "No files can be recovered"
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:15:46 +0200

> No files can be recovered from this session now
<...>
> The files exist, the temp files do not exist- in this case, I had
> saved all my work.

I think this is basically a misunderstanding of what "recover-session"
does.

Emacs saves some state while you are editing.  These are stored in the
temporary files you see in the .saves-* file.  If you have unsaved
changes, recover-session can help you reclaim the unsaved data from the
temporary files into the proper files.

It does not "recover" your "session" back to the way it was before the
crash.  (The package "desktop" does something like this, but you have to
invoke "desktop-save" explicitly in order to start it.)

The Info documentation for Emacs explains this fairly well.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Recover.html

Granted, I think it would be a lot more useful if recover-session could
work in the way the reporter expected.

In the meantime, perhaps the docstring for recover-session should be
clarified.

I have a private bit of elisp I call "recover-buffers" but it's not on
the machine where I'm writing this.  Remind me to follow up here with a
pointer to a public repository in a few weeks.  Thanks.

/* era */

-- 
If this were a real .signature, it would suck less.  Well, maybe not.

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