"Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

"Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

[Steven Buczkowski]

Morning everyone,

I tried updating orgmode through apt-get last night but found M-x
org-version reporting 6.36c not one of the more recent versions so I
reinstalled by hand this morning from the 7.8.06 tar archive at
orgmode.org. Both installations seemed to run without incident but, now,
when I try to activate a capture task, I get the following error:
"Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

I see where this variable is used in several of the orgmode .el files
but don't see where it gets set or how that relates to my capture setup.
So far, everything but my capture templates seem to work just as they
did on Saturday so something is different as a result one of the two
upgrade attempts. I just don't see what. 

I am running orgmode under GNU emacs 23.1.1 and Ubuntu 10.04

M-x org-version still reports version 6.36c but the files
in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp are all timestamped for this
morning's update to 7.8

** .emacs capture template snippet **
(setq org-directory "~/org/")

;;; capture templates
(setq org-capture-templates
 '(("t" "Todo" entry (file+headline (concat org-directory "/Refile.org")
"Tasks")
        "* TODO %?\n %i\n")
   ("c" "Call" entry (file+headline (concat org-directory "/Refile.org")
"Phone Calls")
        "* CALL %?\n %i\n")
   ("e" "Email" entry (file+headline (concat org-directory
"/Refile.org") "Emails")
        "* EMAIL %?\n %i\n")
   ("j" "Journal" entry (file+datetree (concat org-directory
"/Journal.org"))
        "* %?\nEntered on %U\n %i\n")))

*************************************

Any pointers or advice to get this back up and running would be greatly
appreciated.

thanks!

steven
-- 
-----------------------------------
Steven Buczkowski
PhD Candidate - Atmospheric Physics
UMBC Physics Dept
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250

Email: sbuczkowski@umbc.edu
Cell: 413-687-9102 (No texts. Email instead.)
2m/70cm: KB3RRJ (147.135+[156.7]/448.275-[156.7])
Smoke Signal: Two long, Two short. I'll send a rider.
-----------------------------------

Re: "Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

[Nick Dokos]

Steven Buczkowski <steven.buczkowski@gmail.com> wrote:

> Morning everyone,
> 
> I tried updating orgmode through apt-get last night but found M-x
> org-version reporting 6.36c not one of the more recent versions so I
> reinstalled by hand this morning from the 7.8.06 tar archive at
> orgmode.org. Both installations seemed to run without incident but, now,
> when I try to activate a capture task, I get the following error:
> "Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"
> 

Yup: apt-get will get you an ancient org-mode release.

You probably ended up with a "frankenstein" org-mode install with bits
and pieces coming from various places: I'd suggest doing "apt-get remove
org-mode" to get rid of the ancient version and then reinstalling from
the tar file - or, perhaps even better, the git repository: most of us
have found that staying on the bleeding edge is a rewarding experience
(even if an occasionally bloody :-) one - but that happens only
rarely). And even if you run into trouble, with git it is easy to
backtrack and use an official release.  Make sure to follow to the
letter the installation instructions in the manual in these cases.

In some cases at least

M-x locate-library RET

will help you find org-mode files in strange places. Also check
the value of load-path carefully. And make sure that you restart
emacs after changes, in order to make sure that you don't have
stale configurations hanging around.

Nick

Re: "Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

[Steven Buczkowski]

On Mon, 2012-03-26 at 11:14 -0400, Nick Dokos wrote:
> Steven Buczkowski <steven.buczkowski@gmail.com> wrote:
> 

> Yup: apt-get will get you an ancient org-mode release.
> 
> You probably ended up with a "frankenstein" org-mode install with bits
> and pieces coming from various places: I'd suggest doing "apt-get remove
> org-mode" to get rid of the ancient version and then reinstalling from
> the tar file - or, perhaps even better, the git repository: most of us
> have found that staying on the bleeding edge is a rewarding experience
> (even if an occasionally bloody :-) one - but that happens only
> rarely). And even if you run into trouble, with git it is easy to
> backtrack and use an official release.  Make sure to follow to the
> letter the installation instructions in the manual in these cases.
> 
Yep, that's better. I had tried apt-get remove but needed to be a little
more aggressive, apparently. 

I'm now getting far enough along in my knowledge and workflow with
org-mode that I think I can start risking living on the bleeding edge.

Thanks for the suggestions!

steven

Re: "Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

[Bastien]

Hi Steven,

Steven Buczkowski <steven.buczkowski@gmail.com> writes:

> I'm now getting far enough along in my knowledge and workflow with
> org-mode that I think I can start risking living on the bleeding edge.

The master branch of the git repo* is the development branch.

You can also live on two "safer" branches:

~$ git checkout maint           <= latest public release
~$ git checkout hotfix-7.8.06   <= latest release with bugfixes

HTH,

-- 
 Bastien

Re: "Symbol's function definition is void: org-string-nw-p"

[aitor]

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 11:14:37AM -0400, Nick Dokos wrote:
> Steven Buczkowski <steven.buczkowski@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> ...
> Yup: apt-get will get you an ancient org-mode release.
> 
> You probably ended up with a "frankenstein" org-mode install with bits
> and pieces coming from various places: I'd suggest doing "apt-get remove
> org-mode" to get rid of the ancient version and then reinstalling from
> the tar file - or, perhaps even better, the git repository: most of us
> have found that staying on the bleeding edge is a rewarding experience
> (even if an occasionally bloody :-) one - but that happens only
> rarely). And even if you run into trouble, with git it is easy to
> backtrack and use an official release.  Make sure to follow to the
> letter the installation instructions in the manual in these cases.

I had the same problem on ubuntu. What I did was:

- I get org-mode from git and install it in my ~/emacs/org-mode directory. 

$ cd ~/src/org-mode
$ make SHELL=/bin/bash prefix=/home/aitor/emacs/org-mode
$ make SHELL=/bin/bash prefix=/home/aitor/emacs/org-mode install

- In my .emacs, I have this:

(defun remove-org-dirs (dirs)
  "remove all list elements containing the matching '/org$'"
    (let ((result))
      (dolist (dir dirs)
        (unless (string-match "org\\'" dir)
          (setq result (cons dir result))))
      (nreverse result)))

(setq load-path (cons "~/emacs/org-mode/share/emacs/site-lisp"
		      (cons "~/emacs/org-contrib/lisp"
			    (remove-org-dirs load-path))))

The "remove-org-dirs" function removes any system directory for "org"
and thus makes sure that my copy of org-mode gets loaded.

Hope this helps,

                                        aitor