bug#55039: [PATCH] Use VC-relative file names in ChangeLog entries

[Philip Kaludercic]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>
>> Cc: larsi@gnus.org,  55039@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2022 20:11:57 +0000
>> 
>> >> Also, as the entire point of
>> >> the patch was that emacs.git is using relative path names, should a
>> >> .dir-locals.el variable be set to ensure this is done?
>> >
>> > I guess so, yes.  But what would happen to people who use Emacs
>> > versions before 29?
>> 
>> It should have no effect.
>
> Unfortunately, this is not true, at least not the way this was
> implemented in our .dir-locals.el.  Now, whenever I visit _any_ file
> in the repository, I get this warning pop up:
>
>   The local variables list in d:/gnu/git/emacs/trunk/
>   contains values that may not be safe (*).
>
>   Do you want to apply it?  You can type
>   y  -- to apply the local variables list.
>   n  -- to ignore the local variables list.
>   !  -- to apply the local variables list, and permanently mark these
>       values (*) as safe (in the future, they will be set automatically.)
>   i  -- to ignore the local variables list, and permanently mark these
>       values (*) as ignored
>
>       tab-width : 8
>       sentence-end-double-space : t
>       fill-column : 70
>       emacs-lisp-docstring-fill-column : 65
>       bug-reference-url-format : "https://debbugs.gnu.org/%s";
>     * diff-add-log-use-relative-names : t
>       indent-tabs-mode : nil
>       electric-quote-comment : nil
>       electric-quote-string : nil
>       mode : bug-reference-prog
>
> and I _must_ type a response.  If I answer !, Emacs will write to my
> init file, which I'm not sure I like; if I type y, I will have to do
> that for every file I visit.

I see, should I revert the change?

> This is the nuisance caused by immediately adding newly introduced
> variables into file-local or directory-local settings to our
> repository.  We should keep this in mind when introducing such stuff.

Generally speaking, the ability to set a variable only if the symbol is
bound would be useful for features like these.