On 11/19/2015 12:57 PM, Simon Farnsworth wrote:
On Thursday 19 Nov 2015 12:48:50 Andrew Haley wrote:
> On 11/18/2015 06:49 PM, Adam Jackson wrote:
<snip>
>> Phrased another way: no, it's not *your computer* we're talking about
>> here. The computer in question rightfully belongs to someone else; we
>> are here discussing how to be responsible for the code they allow us to
>> run on it.
>
> That is a reasonable point for view. However, the point of Free
> Software is freedom; and the ability to shoot oneself in the foot is
> part of that freedom. One of the greatest advantage of Free Software
> from my point of view is that people can choose. And I know that I am
> not alone in chooing to use (and to write) Free Software for that
> reason: freedom is not just about strict licence compliance.
>
> Five years or so ago I publicly defended Wayland because I was assured
> that things would continue to work after the transition. Being able
> to edit files with emacs is an essential part of that "continuing to
> work."
>
I don't see how a lack of access to the GUI when running as root will prevent
Emacs from editing root-owned files.
TRAMP (if you wish to stay inside emacs) and "sudo -e" (if you'd rather
work
outside emacs) both provide mechanisms (that I use today under X11) for emacs
to edit root-only files while the vast bulk of emacs runs as my user ID.
Put another way: "sudo emacs /etc/hosts" will break under Wayland.
That's bad.
"sudo -e
/etc/hosts", "emacsclient /sudo::/etc/hosts" and "emacs
/sudo::/etc/hosts"
will all still work as they do today, as will "emacs --eval (find-file
/sudo::/etc/hosts)"
I'm complaining about people breaking stuff that Just Works and has
worked for *decades*. And they're doing it "because security" or
"because I don't do it that way." I see that it's possible to get
around the problem in some cases, either by some elaborate shell
scripting or (in this case) a special recipe for editing files. But
that's really not the point.
Andrew.