Re: [Docutils-develop] rst.el compiling remote files

[Hans H. <hhalvors@Princeton.EDU>]

At Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:20:17 -0800,
Martin Blais wrote:
> 
> On 1/11/07, Hans Halvorson <hha...@pr...> wrote:
> > I have been talking with the maintainers of Tramp (remote file editing
> > over ssh for Emacs) about how to get rst-compile (in rst.el) to work
> > with Tramp's remote compilation capabilities.  The results of this
> > discussion are pasted in below.  Might rst.el be modified to make it
> > compatible with Tramp?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Hans Halvorson
> >
> > [From Michael Albinus:]
> >
> > > [From Hans Halvorson:]
> > >
> > > I have pasted in below the definition of the "rst-compile" in rst.el.
> > > > The problem is with the call to "rst-compile-find-conf" in the first
> > > > let clause.  This function tries to search for a file called
> > > > "docutils.conf" in all directories above the directory of the current
> > > > buffer.  I do not know if that function is strictly incompatible with
> > > > Tramp, or whether it just takes a very long time to search on some
> > > > remote hosts.  But I have waited for up to two minutes after calling
> > > > rst-compile before pressing C-g to cancel.
> >
> > > I've modified the code slightly:
> >
> > >   (let ((file-name "docutils.conf")
> > >         (buffer-file "/ssh:localhost:~/.emacs"))
> > >     ;; Move up in the dir hierarchy till we find a change log file.
> > >     (let ((dir (file-name-directory buffer-file)))
> > >       (while (and (or (not (string= "/" dir)) (setq dir nil) nil)
> > >                   (not (file-exists-p (concat dir file-name))))
> > >       (message dir)
> > >         ;; Move up to the parent dir and try again.
> > >         (setq dir (expand-file-name (file-name-directory
> > >                                      (directory-file-name
> > >                                      (file-name-directory dir))))) )
> > >       (or (and dir (concat dir file-name)) nil)
> > >     ))
> >
> > > If you evaluate the code, you'll see something like this in *Messages*:
> >
> > > Mark set
> > > /ssh:albinus@localhost:~/
> > > /ssh:albinus@localhost:/home/albinus/
> > > /ssh:albinus@localhost:/home/
> > > /ssh:albinus@localhost:/ [340 times]
> > > Quit
> >
> > > The point is that the iteration goes via upper directories, and an
> > > upper directory is computed as
> >
> > > (file-name-directory
> > >  (directory-file-name
> > >   (file-name-directory dir)))
> >
> > > That is correct, but for "/ssh:albinus@localhost:/" the upper directory
> > > is "/ssh:albinus@localhost:/" again. The stop condition (string= "/" dir)
> > > does not match in case of remote files.
> >
> > > I fear, Tramp cannot solve the problem; rst.el must take remote files
> > > into account.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> 
> > [From Kai Grossjohann]
> >
> > > rst.el could stop when X and (directory-file-name (file-name-directory
> > > (directory-file-name X))) are equal.  That would work whether the
> > > "root" directory is "/" or "C:/" (say) or "/ssh:foo:/".
> >
> > > What do people think?
> 
> I think Kai is a genius, as always.
> I've made the change just now,. a bit expeditively (works on my box),
> see path below, can you test with tramp please?
> thx
> 
> http://furius.ca/pubcode/pub/conf/common/elisp/rst.el

Yes, the test is successful: remote compilation is now working with
rst.el.  

Thanks for your attention to this matter, and for two (Tramp and
rst.el) very useful programs.