[net.emacs] Centralized backup and checkpoint files for Unipress Emacs?

whm@arizona.UUCP (Bill Mitchell) (08/30/84)

Does anybody have a set of mods that would allow Unipress Emacs to write
backup and checkpoint files in a directory hierarchy modeling that of
the entire file system?  More specifically, suppose that you are in
/usr/src/local/foo and Emacs is about to write a backup file for main.c.
I'd like to have it write that file in the directory $EBACK/usr/src/local/foo,
where EBACK is some per-user subdirectory.  Thus, the backup and checkpoint
files wouldn't be cluttering the current directory and it would also be easy
to get rid of them in one swoop.

I've done some poking around and it seems that this would be pretty simple
to do, only requiring small changes in ConcoctName and WriteFile.

steven@mcvax.UUCP (09/05/84)

> Does anybody have a set of mods that would allow Unipress Emacs to write
> backup and checkpoint files in a directory hierarchy modeling that of the
> entire file system? [...] Thus, the backup and checkpoint files wouldn't be
> cluttering the current directory and it would also be easy to get rid of
> them in one swoop.

An easier way of preventing directories getting bunged up with backups and
checkpoints is to make the checkpoint extension start with a point, and
*prepend* it to the file name, eg to checkpoint "prog.c" as ".@prog.c".
This is easy if you look in config.h. Well, of course the files are still in
the directory, but you don't usually get to see them. Then add a cron task
to periodically remove them automatically.

Steven Pemberton, CWI, Amsterdam; steven@mcvax.