Save lock-files to a directory instead of disabling them

Question

Emacs 24 introduced the ability to disable the creation of the infamous .#file-name lock files.

Evaluating the following lisp form will completely disable Emacs ability to lock files to prevent concurrent changes.

Is there a way to set Emacs to save lock files in a dedicated directory, similarly to what happens with auto-save and backup files?

(setq create-lockfiles nil)

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 02 '15 at 15:11

16

I'm afraid this is not straightforward to do considering F1 v create-lockfiles takes you to filelock.c which only exposes this variable and temporary-file-directory. So, to have this behaviour you'd either need to replace nearly all functions exposed in that file with your own Emacs Lisp functions or hand in a bug via M-x report-emacs-bug and hope for the best.

answered Jan 02 '15 at 15:11

wasamasa

21,803
1
65
97

3

I submitted a bug report at https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=31908. – Resigned June 2023 Jun 20 '18 at 04:44
Definitely helps. Webpack keeps failing because of these lock files. – silencej Jun 02 '20 at 13:40
Submit a bug report for webpack? (Why would it think these were files of interest?) – phils Apr 05 '22 at 21:03

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 05 '22 at 12:59

4

Emacs-28 can now put lock-files in different locations, see lock-file-name-transforms

answered Apr 05 '22 at 12:59

rpluim

4,605
8
22

Save lock-files to a directory instead of disabling them

2 Answers2

Linked