Yeah it's tricky. The reason why packages like Eshell and Magit work pretty much out of the box with Tramp is that they rely on functionality like `expand-file-

Yeah it's tricky. The reason why packages like Eshell and Magit work pretty much out of the box with Tramp is that they rely on functionality like `expand-file-name`, which will handle both the local and remote cases. It's convenient, but as you said, "assumptions are being violated". > Hah. I though I recognized Richard's reply. It was to me. Thanks for being the cause of that really nice reply :)