Michael Albinus <michael.albi...@gmx.de> writes:
Joel Reicher <joel.reic...@gmail.com> writes:
I've only just started looking at how all this works so I'm
sure there's a lot I don't understand, but it seems to me the
intention of tramp-sh-extra-args is broken by the combination
of it using a regex on bash, the default remote shell for tramp
being /bin/sh, and then the (quite common) arrangement of the
remote having a symlink from /bin/sh to /bin/bash. The result
is then bash, but tramp doesn't know it and then never applies
those extra args.
That is true. When tramp-sh-extra-args was added to Tramp
(2002-06-19 according to the ChangeLog), this problem (/bin/sh
is a link) didn't exist. And even now, on many remote systems
(like my QNAP NAS), the setup is different.
However, I don't know a better way to know which shell variant
is used on the remote system prior calling it.
Is this a problem? I don't know how important those extra args
are, but things seem to work better with them.
Users change tramp-default-remote-shell. And then, there is a
good chance to benefit from tramp-sh-extra-args.
And that's kind of what I'm struggling with. I can see the default
value for extra args caters for both bash and zsh. Let's imagine I
have both; which one would be a "better Tramp buddy" as you say
below? And even as a third option I think invoking bash as sh
enables some POSIX compatibility and disables some bash-specific
features, so perhaps that's better still?
My problem here is that from what I can tell the remote shell is
Tramp's agent, and I don't really know what helps Tramp the
most. In the abstract I'm kind of a bit surprised it doesn't
deploy a custom command loop with simple semantics implemented as
an awk script or something like that. (Dependent on a good awk
being available, of course.)
The settings are not essential. They give just a set of
arguments which help to be a better Tramp buddy. But if they
aren't used, the Tramp manual gives you several hints for
configuration of the remote shell, mainly based on the value of
$TERM.
I do think I understand the options, but as I said above, I'm not
sure how to figure out what I'm aiming for.
Thanks and regards,
- Joel
