Re: Emacs 21.3.50.1 (CVS sources) MacOS X tex-mode bug

[Stefan Monnier]

> The function creates a shell using "make-comint", then waits for the
> shell to start in the loop at the bottom.  Presumably, when the shell
> has started, it will issue a prompt and the (buffer-size) procedure
> will return non-zero and break out of the loop.  The problem is that
> it never does.

> I am informed by Andreas Schwab that ptys are broken on Mac OS X, and
> therefore process-connection-type is set to nil so instead of allocating
> a pseudo-terminal to communicate with the sub-process emacs uses a pipe.
> The shell discovers that its not connected to a terminal and runs as
> non-interactive, suppressing the prompts and causing the infinite loop
> I describe above.

AFAIK the "broken tty" issue was solved a while back (somewhere around 10.3)
and I thought we had reverted process-connection-type's default to t.
But indeed I see in lisp/term/mac-win.el that we still set
process-connection-type to nil.  Shouldn't we remove it, or at least make it
depend on the OS's version?

> --- emacs/lisp/textmodes/tex-mode.el.~1.153.~   Sat Dec 11 17:00:38 2004
> +++ emacs/lisp/textmodes/tex-mode.el    Sun Jan 16 13:59:50 2005
> @@ -1495,7 +1495,8 @@
>         (make-comint
>          "tex-shell"
>          (or tex-shell-file-name (getenv "ESHELL") shell-file-name)
> -       nil)
> +       nil
> +       "-i")
>       (let ((proc (get-process "tex-shell")))
>         (set-process-sentinel proc 'tex-shell-sentinel)
>         (set-process-query-on-exit-flag proc nil)

> This adds the "-i" switch to the command line that exec's the shell, causing
> it to run interactively.

> I have tested this on Mac OS X and it did solve the problem.  A very similar
> "-i" switch appears in lisp/shell.el ("M-x shell").

Indeed, shell uses the same trick.  So I guess it's OK to do it in tex-shell
as well.  If anybody wants to install that patch, please do it for me.


        Stefan