But during migrating existing packages, the drawback has
been obvious: Everywhere there is the need of checking a command for
being remote or not, and then to call `process-file' or
`call-process'.
I can't see why you did that. If in a certain call you want
the file name handler to be used, you can unconditionally call
process-file. Why didn't you do that?
If `call-process' would be able to handle remote
commands, most of the cases nothing would be needed to be changed -
the existing code would simply work. And the same for `start-process'.
This would be an incompatible change, and I am not convinced it is
correct or meaningful. The definition of call-process is that it runs
the command you specified. I does not seem right for the mere choice
of default-directory should have such a major effect on call-process.
Conceptually, process-file is different.
And the same for `start-process'.
Likewise the mere default-directory should not have such a drastic
effect on start-process. If we have a facility to start a process
on a possibly-remote machine, we should specify it differently.
Perhaps with a new function start-remote-process that has a new arg
that says which machine. When that arg is nil, it would be equivalent
to start-process.
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