Re: preserve_uidgid is described in the manual, but is not implemented

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello!

> This feature should be usefull for system administrators and even
> documented in the mc.1, but it is commented out in setup.c and does not
> implemented in filegui.c and fileopctx.c.
> 
> Is it worth the trouble to implement this feature? (about 10 lines in
> the 3 files).

Indeed, the global preserve_uidgid is unused.  There is a field in
FileOpContext with this name, but it's always set for root and unset for
other users.

You can only implement this option for root, and it probably belongs to
the file dialogs.  Global config-only options are very inconvenient to
use, especially an option like preserve_uidgid.  The sysadmin does
different tasks.  Some require preserving the ownership, some don't.  
Changing /root/.mc/ini every time is ugly.

root is not a user.  It's a position.  Ideally, root should not have user
preferences, because different users can be using this account for
administration.  It's just wrong to say something like "root on this
machine prefers to preserve ownership of files when copying them".

I'd like to get rid of most hidden options, and preserve_uidgid seems to
be a good candidate to be killed now.  There is no point in keeping
documentation about it - if we ever reimplement this option, it will be a
part of a dialog, and will require a different description.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin