Re: ftp & multi-hop?

[Kai Grossjohann]

"sp1ff" <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm looking at `tramp.el', and I'm wondering if we could define a
> method that would do just this.  I.e. only be permitted as the last
> hop, and use ftp (or any out-of-band mechanism, I suppose).  I suppose
> we'd need to define an action that could be handled by
> `tramp-process-multi-actions', yes?  Or would this be a real kludge?
> I'm new to `tramp' ...  BTW - what's 'smb'?

It wouldn't work.  You need to create some machinery that knows to
create two connections for a single filename.  Currently, Tramp
assumes that a single connection is sufficient.

Hm.  But the second connection is only needed for the actual file
transfer, and that happens in just two functions,
tramp-handle-write-region and tramp-handle-insert-file-contents (I
believe).  So the change required would be fairly localized.

However, there is another problem: if you use Ange-FTP for the
ultimate hop, then all the machinery in Tramp that finds out directory
contents and file permissions and suchlike won't work.  I guess it
would be possible to use Ange-FTP for this machinery, but I don't
know how.

Oh, tramp-smb also uses a non-shell for doing this.  I never tried to
use smbclient, so I have no idea what it is like.  Michael, can you
say something about where the problems were in using the Tramp code
for tramp-smb?

Kai