Re: Comint and windows

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 00:12:51 -0800 (PST)
> From: Sam Halliday <sam.halliday@gmail.com>
> 
> I've been forced to use Windows at work and I'm finding some of my modes don't work.
> 
> One mode that is not working for me is sbt-mode:
> 
> https://github.com/hvesalai/sbt-mode/issues/33
> 
> It is a pretty standard implementation of a major mode that talks to an external process via comint. But it looks like commands typed in emacs are not being sent to the process.
> 
> Are there any known gotchas with writing these sorts of modes to run on windows?

Yes.  It's likely a buffering issue.  Windows doesn't have pty's, so
communications with subprocesses is via pipes, which fail the isatty
test, and so the subprocess most probably buffers its standard
streams because it doesn't sense that they are connected to a terminal
device.

Try invoking the subprocess in a way that disables buffering of
stdin/stdout on the subprocess's side.  It could be some command-line
switch or maybe some command you need to invoke immediately after
invoking the subprocess.  (If there's no such option, ask the
developers to provide one, or hack the code yourself.)