Re: Prompt display in Panther build

[Michael Mauger <mmaug@yahoo.com>]

Andrew Choi writes:
>> There are (or at least there used to be) problems with pseudo-ttys
>> (ptys) on Mac OS X, therefore ptys are disabled for some (all?)
>> operations.  I think the variable process-connection-type controls
>> this, so you could try to tweak that.
> 
> I believe the pty problem has been fixed in Panther/Darwin 7.0 (unless
> someone can tell me otherwise).
> 
> If behavior differs in terminal and GUI mode, perhaps it is useful to
> check environment variable settings passed to `psql' that are different
> in the two cases (value of process-environment).  Also you may want to
> check what arguments are used when psql is called (by stopping at
> start-process (?)) in both cases.

I did some further checking on this issue.  The prompt is suppressed in
psql if isatty(fileno(stdin)) or isatty(fileno(stdout)) return false.  If
there are in fact issues with pty support under Mac OS X that would
explain the problem.  

I also did some checking under Windows where there is no native pty
support.  Even though psql is a cygwin app, Emacs isn't, so psql doesn't
detect it's tty state properly (and never will, probably).  

I have submitted a small patch to the Postgres team for the psql
processor to support a command line option that will assume that the
processor is running on a tty even if the environment says it isn't.  If
and when this patch is accepted and released it will be possible to
customize sql-postgres-options to add this new option when psql is
invoked.

-- Michael

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