Re: Device 0 is not a termcap terminal device

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Yidong!

On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 12:14:32PM -0400, Chong Yidong wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:

> > No suggestions, but a "me too".  I've just updated and rebuilt Emacs-23,
> > and with this command:

> >     $ ~/emacs/emacs/src/emacs -batch -l 000tests.el -f do-all-tests

> > (i.e., run the CC Mode test suite),  I get the same error message,
> > namely:

> >     Device 0 is not a termcap terminal device

> > .  This is distressing.  It also suggests the error is nothing to do with
> > --daemon, but perhaps more to do with ttys.  The error happens both on a
> > Linux tty and an X-Windows term.

> Could you find out when the problem first showed up?

I've tried.  My first idea was to download the Emacs head at various
dates, starting 64 days ago, and do a binary chop from there.  It didn't
quite work out like that.

I downloaded each version of the head like this:

    $ cvs checkout -D 2008-08-01 emacs

in a separate directory, then configured and built thusly:

    $ ./configure   --with-gif=no --with-tiff=no
    $ make bootstrap

Here're my results:

Friday 2008-08-01 (64 days ago): Got the error message "Device 0 is not a
  termcap terminal device".

Thursday 2008-05-29 (128 days ago): Got a build error:
  "make[1]: *** No rule to make target
  `/home/acm/emacs/emacs-290508/emacs/src/../lisp/help.elc', needed by 
`../etc/DOC'.
  Stop."

Monday 2008-06-30 (96 days ago): Got the same error message "Device 0
  ...".  Incidentally, got a seg fault during building several times,
  each time restarting with "make".

Wednesday 2008-03-26 (192 days ago): Same error message "Device 0 ....".

Sunday 2007-09-16 (384 days ago): Got a (possibly different) error
  message "Unknown terminal device".

Friday 2007-06-08, Friday 2007-06-15: Got build failures each time.

[Perhaps relevant here is that Emacs 22.1 was released on Monday
2007-06-04.]

So I'm not particularly close to tracking down the critical date.  Each
iteration is taking me a little over half an hour, so it's a fairly
arduous process.  Either I'm doing something stupid in my test suite, or
there's a bug which has been around since shortly after Emacs 22 was
released.  My test suite works fine in Emacs 22.x.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).