bug#24849: Is Emacs put in idle mode when window is not focused?

[Daniel Colascione <dancol@dancol.org>]

BTW: please don't top-post

On 11/01/2016 01:18 PM, Johan Andersson wrote:
> I added the set-process-filter in case that would make a difference, but
> I don't think that is the issue here. The issue is that the services
> (sub processes of Emacs as you say) takes a long time to respond when
> Emacs is idle. If I run the same command from a terminal, that doesn't
> happen.

Are you sure that your subprocess isn't buffering its output?

Can you catch Emacs in the act?

(Assuming GNU/Linux here.) Run emacs with "strace -s256 -o trace -ff -tt 
emacs" and look at the trace.* files produced. You should have one for 
each thread in each process. You should be able to identify the process 
involved from the system calls in each. (Look for execve.) Now, look for 
the write(2) system call from your subprocess and see how much time 
passes between that system call and Emacs waking up from pselect.

If Emacs wakes up very soon after that write(2), the problem lies in 
your code. If there is a big delay between that write(2) and Emacs 
returning from pselect, the problem is likely in Emacs.

>
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 9:13 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org
> <mailto:eliz@gnu.org>> wrote:
>
>     > From: Johan Andersson <johan.andersson@burtcorp.com
>     <mailto:johan.andersson@burtcorp.com>>
>     > Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2016 20:48:59 +0100
>     > Cc: 24849@debbugs.gnu.org <mailto:24849@debbugs.gnu.org>
>     >
>     > (let* ((default-directory "/tmp")
>     > (process (start-process "server" nil "python" "-m" "SimpleHTTPServer" "8000")))
>     > (set-process-filter
>     > process
>     > (lambda (_ output)
>     > ;; ...
>     > )))
>     >
>     > What happens in practice is that, when I get to work, I select the services I need and start them (unless
>     > Emacs was killed, they are already started). Sometimes I use Emacs quite frequently and then this is not so
>     > much of an issue because Emacs does not have time to idle. But when I don't use Emacs for a while, it will
>     > hang waiting for the response from the service (because Emacs is idle).
>
>     So you are saying that the service, which is a sub-process of Emacs,
>     produces some output, but Emacs doesn't read that output timely enough
>     because it's idle?  That's not possible, I think: when Emacs is idle,
>     it is most of the time stuck inside a call to 'pselect', which should
>     return immediately when some input arrived from a sub-process.
>
>     So I guess I still don't understand something in your setup.  But
>     what?
>
>
>
>
> --
> Johan Andersson
> System Developer, Burt
> www.burtcorp.com <http://www.burtcorp.com>
> Cell: +46 761 041607
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