occasional failure to rename

occasional failure to rename

[knubee]

Usually I am able to rename files in dired, but sometimes emacs throws
an error when I try to rename/move a file or directory:

  dired-rename-file: Symbol's value as variable is void: dired-backup-
overwrite

This does not happen all the time, but when it does the only solution
I have found is to close out of emacs and restart.

A web/newsgroup search does not turn up anything. Anyone know a) what
could be causing this, and b) a less laborious way to resolve it if/
when it does occur?

Re: occasional failure to rename

[martin rudalics]

 > Usually I am able to rename files in dired, but sometimes emacs throws
 > an error when I try to rename/move a file or directory:
 >
 >   dired-rename-file: Symbol's value as variable is void: dired-backup-
 > overwrite

We probably have to add an autoload for `dired-backup-overwrite'.

Can you make it fail reliably when you do Emacs -Q, open a directory,
and try to rename a file before doing anything else?

 > This does not happen all the time, but when it does the only solution
 > I have found is to close out of emacs and restart.

Do you have to restart Emacs because it's unresponsive or because it's
the only way to make renaming work?

Re: occasional failure to rename

[knubee]

> Can you make it fail reliably when you do Emacs -Q, open a directory,
> and try to rename a file before doing anything else?

That worked fine.  (Part of the difficulty here it happens enough to
be significant, but not often enough that I notice the pattern of what
I did prior to the problem occurring.)

>  > This does not happen all the time, but when it does the only solution
>  > I have found is to close out of emacs and restart.
>
> Do you have to restart Emacs because it's unresponsive or because it's
> the only way to make renaming work?

Because it is the only way to make renaming work. Everything else
continues to work just fine, as far as I can tell.

Re: occasional failure to rename

[martin rudalics]

 >> Can you make it fail reliably when you do Emacs -Q, open a directory,
 >> and try to rename a file before doing anything else?
 >
 > That worked fine.  (Part of the difficulty here it happens enough to
 > be significant, but not often enough that I notice the pattern of what
 > I did prior to the problem occurring.)

Weird.  Do you use wdired (aka "Edit File Names")?

You could customize `debug-on-error' to t on your system.  This would
give us a clue what caused the bug.

 >>> This does not happen all the time, but when it does the only solution
 >>> I have found is to close out of emacs and restart.
 >>
 >> Do you have to restart Emacs because it's unresponsive or because it's
 >> the only way to make renaming work?
 >
 > Because it is the only way to make renaming work. Everything else
 > continues to work just fine, as far as I can tell.

The next time this happens do

M-: (require 'dired-aux)

and retry (but post the contents of the *Backtrace* buffer here before).
You obviously could put

(require 'dired-aux)

directly in your .emacs, but this would deprive us of any opportunity to
further investigate the cause of this bug.

Re: occasional failure to rename

[knubee]

> Weird.  Do you use wdired (aka "Edit File Names")?

Yes. As far as I can tell I have the latest version:  1.9.2pre3

> The next time this happens do
>
> M-: (require 'dired-aux)
>
> and retry (but post the contents of the *Backtrace* buffer here before).

Ok. thanks.

Re: occasional failure to rename

[knubee]

knubee wrote:
> > Weird.  Do you use wdired (aka "Edit File Names")?
>
> Yes. As far as I can tell I have the latest version:  1.9.2pre3
>
> > The next time this happens do
> >
> > M-: (require 'dired-aux)
> >
> > and retry (but post the contents of the *Backtrace* buffer here before).
>
> Ok. thanks.

Re: occasional failure to rename

[knubee]

t just happened again and I saw the problem. It occurs after I use
"r" to change a file name. After that, emacs will throw an error if I
use "R" to change/move a file during the same session. This occurs
reliably.

Re: occasional failure to rename

[martin rudalics]

 > > > Weird.  Do you use wdired (aka "Edit File Names")?
 > >
 > > Yes. As far as I can tell I have the latest version:  1.9.2pre3

Emacs 22.1 has version 2.0.  What are your Emacs version and operating
system?

 > > > The next time this happens do
 > > >
 > > > M-: (require 'dired-aux)
 > > >
 > > > and retry (but post the contents of the *Backtrace* buffer here before).
 > >
 > > Ok. thanks.
 >
 > t just happened again and I saw the problem. It occurs after I use
 > "r" to change a file name.

What command was "r" bound to when you typed it, was it
`wdired-change-to-wdired-mode'?  Please do C-h k r.

 > After that, emacs will throw an error if I
 > use "R" to change/move a file during the same session. This occurs
 > reliably.

Does

     M-: (require 'dired-aux)

work at least?

Re: occasional failure to rename

[knubee]

>  > > > Weird.  Do you use wdired (aka "Edit File Names")?
>  > >
>  > > Yes. As far as I can tell I have the latest version:  1.9.2pre3
>
> Emacs 22.1 has version 2.0.  What are your Emacs version and operating
> system?

Ah, that solved it! I have 22.1 on ubuntu -- but I still had the old
version of wdired in my local elisp directory, so the new version in
the distrubution was being shadowed. removing the old wdired file
fixed things.

Is there a straightforward way of comparing which packages one has
loaded locally versus those that have been incorporated into the
distribution?

Re: occasional failure to rename

[David Kastrup]

knubee <knubee@gmail.com> writes:

>>  > > > Weird.  Do you use wdired (aka "Edit File Names")?
>>  > >
>>  > > Yes. As far as I can tell I have the latest version:  1.9.2pre3
>>
>> Emacs 22.1 has version 2.0.  What are your Emacs version and operating
>> system?
>
> Ah, that solved it! I have 22.1 on ubuntu -- but I still had the old
> version of wdired in my local elisp directory, so the new version in
> the distrubution was being shadowed. removing the old wdired file
> fixed things.
>
> Is there a straightforward way of comparing which packages one has
> loaded locally versus those that have been incorporated into the
> distribution?

At least
M-x list-load-path-shadows RET

can provide some sort of a hint what might be duplicated.  Comparing
the versions is not easy, however, since you can't load both files at
once.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: occasional failure to rename

[knubee]

> At least
> M-x list-load-path-shadows RET
>
> can provide some sort of a hint what might be duplicated.  Comparing
> the versions is not easy, however, since you can't load both files at
> once.

Ah, thanks! I see I have some cleaning up to do :-)