ediff on Win32

ediff on Win32

[Bob Babcock]

I have a patch to apply to an emacs lisp file.  I think this means I need 
to use one of the ediff functions.  The problem is, when I load ediff, I 
get a short beep and emacs becomes unresponsive.  I can't RTFM because even 
ediff-documentation triggers the hang.  This is Win/2K, emacs 21.3.1 or a 
CVS version from http://ourcomments.org/cgi-bin/emacsw32-dl-latest.pl.  
Comand-line option -q to not load .emacs doesn't help.

Re: ediff on Win32

[Kevin Rodgers]

Bob Babcock wrote:
> I have a patch to apply to an emacs lisp file.  I think this means I need 
> to use one of the ediff functions.  The problem is, when I load ediff, I 
> get a short beep and emacs becomes unresponsive.  I can't RTFM because even 
> ediff-documentation triggers the hang.  This is Win/2K, emacs 21.3.1 or a 
> CVS version from http://ourcomments.org/cgi-bin/emacsw32-dl-latest.pl.  
> Comand-line option -q to not load .emacs doesn't help.

Stick with -q for now, just to simplify debugging the problem.

How do you load ediff?  Try using --debug-init as well as -q,
or `M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET' after you've
started emacs, and post the resulting *Backtrace* buffer.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA

Re: ediff on Win32

[Bob Babcock]

Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com> wrote in
news:mailman.4166.1170922499.2155.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org: 

> Stick with -q for now, just to simplify debugging the problem.
> 
> How do you load ediff?  Try using --debug-init as well as -q,
> or `M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET' after you've
> started emacs, and post the resulting *Backtrace* buffer.

Thanks for your suggestions.  Emacs starts cmdproxy.exe when ediff is 
started.  If I use task manager to kill the process tree for cmdproxy 
(killing just the process isn't enough), emacs 21 comes back to life (emacs 
22 does not).  Then in the backtrace buffer, I see 
(file-error "Searching for program" "no such file or directory" "diff3")
I didn't have diff3.exe in my emacs install directory (or anywhere else).

I tried diff3.exe from two sources:
http://www.tasoft.com/patches.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/
but neither works.  Only change is that if I run ediff-documentation and 
kill the process tree, I actually get the documentation instead of an error 
message (in emacs 21.3.1).

So I'm not sure if I just need a compatible diff3.exe or if something else 
is wrong.

When I shutdown for the night after my earlier posting, I had a dozen 
messages about cmdproxy not responding.  That was a not-very-subtle clue.

Re: ediff on Win32

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Bob Babcock wrote:

> I tried diff3.exe from two sources:
> http://www.tasoft.com/patches.html
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/
> but neither works.  Only change is that if I run ediff-documentation and 
> kill the process tree, I actually get the documentation instead of an error 
> message (in emacs 21.3.1).

The one from gnuwin32 is what is shipped with Emacs+EmacsW32 (which 
contains the yet in beta-test Emacs v 22) and I have had no problems 
with it.

Re: ediff on Win32

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:16:04 +0100
> From: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> CC: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> Bob Babcock wrote:
> 
> > I tried diff3.exe from two sources:
> > http://www.tasoft.com/patches.html
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/
> > but neither works.  Only change is that if I run ediff-documentation and 
> > kill the process tree, I actually get the documentation instead of an error 
> > message (in emacs 21.3.1).
> 
> The one from gnuwin32 is what is shipped with Emacs+EmacsW32 (which 
> contains the yet in beta-test Emacs v 22) and I have had no problems 
> with it.

Same here.

Bob, sorry for asking the obvious: you do have diff.exe as well, do
you?  diff3 will not work without it.

If that is not the problem, please show us how diff3 from gnuwin32
``does not work''.  Please show a diff3 command line and any error
messages it produced.

Re: ediff on Win32

[Bob Babcock]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote in
news:mailman.4236.1171037300.2155.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org: 

> Bob, sorry for asking the obvious: you do have diff.exe as well, do
> you?  diff3 will not work without it.
> 
> If that is not the problem, please show us how diff3 from gnuwin32
> ``does not work''.  Please show a diff3 command line and any error
> messages it produced.

That was it.  I did have diff.exe, but the time stamp was 1990 and it 
wasn't a gnu-related program.  Updating this, and my 1991 patch.com 
(with 1983 copyright message) seems to have fixed it.  Thanks.