Re: gnus should backup .newsrc.eld

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Mon, Dec 15 2008, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:

> Oh, every body missed (info "(gnus)Startup Files") "If you want
> version control for this file, set `gnus-backup-startup-file'."
> Well, maybe it should be t by default.

Whether backups of ~/.newsrc.eld are created is controlled by
`make-backup-files'.  `gnus-backup-startup-file' just controls whether
Gnus makes numerical backups, like `version-control' does for other
Emacs files.  In other words, `gnus-backup-startup-file' overrides
`version-control' for .newsrc.eld, nothing more.

So with the defaults (make-backup-files == t, gnus-backup-startup-file
== never) you get a single backup file for .newsrc.eld (see the doc
string of `version-control').  One could argue that
`gnus-backup-startup-file' should default to the value of
`version-control', but as .newsrc.eld tends to become large, it might
be a good idea to create only a single backup.  But defaulting to t
(i.e., make numeric backup versions unconditionally) — independent
from the value of `version-control' — is a bad idea, IMHO.

For now, I fixed the doc string of `gnus-backup-startup-file' which
was misleading:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
--- gnus-start.el	4 Sep 2008 06:04:04 -0000	7.67
+++ gnus-start.el	15 Dec 2008 19:37:27 -0000
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
   :type 'file)
 
 (defcustom gnus-backup-startup-file 'never
-  "Whether to create backup files.
+  "Control use of version numbers for backups of `gnus-startup-file'.
 This variable takes the same values as the `version-control'
 variable."
   :version "22.1"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/