bug#23186: closed (Re: bug#23186: 25.0.92; Tramp: Windows does not always set COMSPEC, tramp blows up in a string-match)

[Jerry Asher]

Thanks for the response Michael.

Clearly I wasn't interested in a flamewar either.

+ I submitted a relatively complete bug report

+ I explained how I got there

+ I explained its relative importance

+ I provided evidence that others were seeing this issue in different areas

+ I explained I was not a windows developer

+ I proposed an initial suggested fix

None of these are activities someone looking for a flamewar would do

Imagine my horror to be met on the very first response from Gnu

+ What I wanted the maintainers to do was unreasonable

+ My particular configuration invalidated the need to look at the bug entirely

+ A misrepresentation of my fix making it look much more fragile

+ Being given a vague demand to produce more evidence and no instructions on what was needed or how to supply it

What is the full contents of the environment of the Emacs process when
you run that zapped binary?

And then to have a defamatory slur placed in the bug report.

Michael, I am not interested in a flamewar, regardless, your trust in him aside, I was abused by Eli this morning.

> Your first proposal, trusting C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe, hasn't been

accepted, by reasons Eli has given. And indeed, it looks too me like too
much heuristic, so I'm with Eli.

I don't even know what that means. 

As I said:

+ "C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe"  THIS WAS LITERALLY NOT WHAT I PROPOSED

+ Regardless, when COMSPEC is not defined, assigning NIL to tramp-encoding-shell CERTAINLY IS WRONG.

+ Other people are seeing this problem too, google it as I showed you.

Since you are the maintainer, I would never deign to claim I know more than you do about TRAMP

So please Michael, 

+ bug reporters are often NOT the best person to analyse or propose a solution.

+ When COMSPEC is not defined, assigning NIL to tramp-encoding-shell CERTAINLY IS WRONG.

+ Other people see this problem too.,

WHAT DO YOU THE MAINTAINER PROPOSE as a solution?

Since I am not a windows developer, I think my actual proposal setting the value to "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cmd.exe" is a reasonable first start.

I note it seems to work up to and including Windows 10 64.

I don't know where cmd.exe is supposed to live, or how it's supposed to be found, but I do know the path I suggested, which misrepresented as you and Eli have done, actually works and would work FAR better than setting it to NIL.

Once more, I am not a windows developer, you are the maintainer, I have reported a bug, a bug felt not just by me but by many others, the current code, which sets it to NIL is 10,000% guaranteed to be wrong, since you REJECTED my proposed suggestion which would seem to work in most cases and be a great place to start,

Here are a list of many other people who see this bug:

https://www.google.com/search?q=emacs+cmd.exe+tramp-encoding-shell+string-match

AS THE TRAMP MAINTAINER, WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST TO FIX THIS BUG?

Thank you for your attention,

Jerry

On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 12:47 PM, Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:

Jerry Asher <ja2038@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Jerry,

>> Tramp is designed to work with Emacs as released by the Emacs
>> development team. That Emacs doesn't have this problem. I think it
>> would be unreasonable for anyone to expect the Tramp maintainers to
>> cater to arbitrary changes in the Emacs code or in how it is
>> configured on Windows, let alone if you poke some addresses in the PE
>> headers of the produced binary.
>
> We are ALREADY talking about a very specific setting IN emacs FOR
> Windows. God forbid we should ask the maintainers to discuss how emacs
> is configured on Windows in that context.
>
>> Your fix is AFAIK incorrect because the directory where cmd.exe
>> lives
>> is not necessarily C:\Windows\system32. It just happens to be there
>> on the particular system where you tried that.
>
> And I agree, setting the variable to nil where it is guaranteed to
> blow up, and is reported to do so as my search shows is FAR FAR better
> than finding a reasonable default that will work most of the time.

I'm not interested in any flamewar. Pls stop.

I haven't too much knowledge about MS Windows, and many years of
experience let me trust Eli.

If you are interested in changing Tramp according to your needs, pls be
cooperative. Make a proposal about a config option which could be used
instead of the COMSPEC env which doesn't exist in your environment. Make
a proposal how to avoid calling cmd.exe at all, it seems not be
mandatory, I believe. Propose something else what is possible.

Your first proposal, trusting C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe, hasn't been
accepted, by reasons Eli has given. And indeed, it looks too me like too
much heuristic, so I'm with Eli.

Best regards, Michael.

PS: I am the Tramp maintainer.