autosave

[Matthew Woehlke]

Jens Dagerbo wrote:
> Here's a quick stab at autosave for KDevelop3.
> [snip]
> Opinions? Worth applying?

IMO, No.

Aside from the fact that there might be a reason I didn't save a file 
(and automatically calling "save" potentially causes me to lose the 
ability to go back to the on-disk version... especially if KDevelop 
crashes so that undo history is gone), I can think of a very good reason 
not to use 'save'. Say I am hacking on two files; tinkering in one 
(eventually I will do something useful), and making serious changes in 
another. I may be doing builds occasionally to test changes. Now with 
auto-save, the "tinker" file gets saved in a non-working state, and 
suddenly I can't build.

IMO the "right" way to do this is have something like a backup suffix 
used for auto-save. This is how most implementations of auto-save (at 
least, that I can think of offhand) work. You then delete the auto-save 
file when a normal save is successful. Also, this way the file is still 
marked 'modified' so you know it has been changed since your last 
'regular' save. On opening the file, a check is done if there is an 
auto-saved version; if yes, you are prompted to open the auto-save 
version (preferably you also have the 'view diff' option).

Also, why put this in KDevelop and not KATE?

-- 
Matthew
"Will somebody get this walking carpet out of my way?!" -- Princess Leia 
Organa