offical Emacs 22.1: `term' problem on MS Windows

offical Emacs 22.1: `term' problem on MS Windows

[Peter Tury]

Hi,

I've just installed official v22.1 from gnu ftp server onto MS Windows
XP. I haven't customized it yet. I tried M-x term and got error:

"Spawning child process: invalid argument"

Then I digged into the code and saw that  term-exec-1 from term.el
uses "/bin/sh" unconditionally. I tried to comment it out, so I got:

"
    (apply 'start-process name buffer
;;	   "/bin/sh" "-c"
;;	   (format "stty -nl echo rows %d columns %d sane 2>/dev/null;\
;;if [ $1 = .. ]; then shift; fi; exec \"$@\""
;;		   term-height term-width)
;;	   ".."
	   command switches)))
"
and, for first sight it seems to work (since `command' has write
value: "C:/Program Files/emacs-22.1/bin/cmdproxy.exe").

Is this a known bug? Or I misused somethnig?

Thanks in advance,
P

Re: offical Emacs 22.1: `term' problem on MS Windows

[Jason Rumney]

Peter Tury wrote:
> Then I digged into the code and saw that  term-exec-1 from term.el
> uses "/bin/sh" unconditionally. I tried to comment it out, so I got:
>
> "
>     (apply 'start-process name buffer
> ;;	   "/bin/sh" "-c"
> ;;	   (format "stty -nl echo rows %d columns %d sane 2>/dev/null;\
> ;;if [ $1 = .. ]; then shift; fi; exec \"$@\""
> ;;		   term-height term-width)
> ;;	   ".."
> 	   command switches)))
> "
> and, for first sight it seems to work (since `command' has write
> value: "C:/Program Files/emacs-22.1/bin/cmdproxy.exe").
>   

It might seem to work for some definition of "work", but it is no longer 
a terminal emulator if you remove those lines, and you might as well 
just use M-x shell.

AFAIK there is no way to get M-x term working on Windows, as its 
implementation of terminals is completely different and undocumented.

Re: offical Emacs 22.1: `term' problem on MS Windows

[Peter Tury]

On Mar 18, 12:25 am, Jason Rumney <jas...@gnu.org> wrote:
> Peter Tury wrote:
> > Then I digged into the code and saw that  term-exec-1 from term.el
> > uses "/bin/sh" unconditionally. I tried to comment it out, so I got:
>
> > "
> >     (apply 'start-process name buffer
> > ;;    "/bin/sh" "-c"
> > ;;    (format "stty -nl echo rows %d columns %d sane 2>/dev/null;\
> > ;;if [ $1 = .. ]; then shift; fi; exec \"$@\""
> > ;;            term-height term-width)
> > ;;    ".."
> >       command switches)))
> > "
> > and, for first sight it seems to work (since `command' has write
> > value: "C:/Program Files/emacs-22.1/bin/cmdproxy.exe").
>
> It might seem to work for some definition of "work", but it is no longer
> a terminal emulator if you remove those lines, and you might as well
> just use M-x shell.
>
> AFAIK there is no way to get M-x term working on Windows, as its
> implementation of terminals is completely different and undocumented.

Then, I think, it should be removed from Windows binaries. Or be
documented as not working there. In its current form it simply gives
an error message showing some buggy behaviour. At least it should show
up an error message saying "this is not implemented in this OS". What
do you think?

Thanks,
P

Re: offical Emacs 22.1: `term' problem on MS Windows

[Jason Rumney]

Peter Tury wrote:
> Then, I think, it should be removed from Windows binaries. Or be
> documented as not working there.
>   

I added an entry in etc/PROBLEMS about this. We don't remove things just 
because they do not work on Windows. Someone may find a way to make it 
work with Cygwin in future, for example.