Fix `emacsclient -ne '(+ 2 2)'' (reported by Han Boetes), and clean up some corner...
[bpt/emacs.git] / README.multi-tty
1 -*- coding: utf-8; mode: text; -*-
2 GOAL
3 ----
4
5 This branch implements support for opening multiple, different tty
6 devices and simultaneous X and tty frames from a single Emacs session.
7
8 Some use cases:
9 Emacs is notoriously slow at startup, so most people use another
10 editor or emacsclient for quick editing jobs from the console.
11 Unfortunately, emacsclient was very awkward to use, because it did not
12 support opening a new Emacs frame on the current virtual console.
13 Now, with multi-tty support, it can do that. (Emacsclient starts up
14 faster than vi!)
15
16 Some Gnus users (including me) run Gnus in an X frame in its own Emacs
17 instance, which they typically leave running for weeks. It would be
18 nice if they could connect to this instance from a remote ssh session
19 and check their messages without opening a remote X frame or resorting
20 to gnus-slave.
21
22 WHO IS DOING IT
23 ---------------
24
25 I'm Károly Lőrentey. My address: lorentey@elte.hu.
26
27 Comments, bug reports, suggestions and patches are welcome; send them
28 to multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu.
29
30 The following is a (sadly incomplete) list of people who have
31 contributed to the project by testing, submitting patches, bug
32 reports, and suggestions. Thanks!
33
34 ARISAWA Akihiro <ari at mbf dot ocn dot ne dot jp>
35 Vincent Bernat <bernat at luffy dot cx>
36 Han Boetes <han at mijncomputer dot nl>
37 Robert J. Chassell <bob at rattlesnake dot com>
38 Romain Francoise <romain at orebokech dot com>
39 Ami Fischman <ami at fischman dot org>
40 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs <friedel at nomaden dot org>
41 IRIE Tetsuya <irie at t dot email dot ne dot jp>
42 Yoshiaki Kasahara <kasahara at nc dot kyushu-u dot ac dot jp>
43 Jurej Kubelka <Juraj dot Kubelka at email dot cz>
44 David Lichteblau <david at lichteblau dot com>
45 Xavier Mallard <zedek at gnu-rox dot org>
46 Istvan Marko <mi-mtty at kismala dot com>
47 Ted Morse <morse at ciholas dot com>
48 Dan Nicolaescu <dann at ics dot uci dot edu>
49 Gergely Nagy <algernon at debian dot org>
50 Mark Plaksin <happy at mcplaksin dot org>
51 Francisco Borges <borges at let dot rug dot nl>
52 Frank Ruell <stoerte at dreamwarrior dot net>
53 Dan Waber <dwaber at logolalia dot com>
54 and many others.
55
56 Richard Stallman was kind enough to review an earlier version of my
57 patches.
58
59
60 MAILING LISTS
61 -------------
62
63 The multi-tty mailing list (discussion & bug reports):
64
65 Address: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
66 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty
67 Archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.multi-tty/
68
69 Commit notifications (read-only):
70
71 Address: multi-tty-commits@lists.fnord.hu
72 Signup: http://lists.fnord.hu/mailman/listinfo/multi-tty-commits
73
74
75 STATUS
76 ------
77
78 The branch is now very stable and almost full-featured. All of the
79 major problems have been fixed, only a few minor issues remain. (It
80 still needs to be ported to Windows/Mac/DOS, though.) Both multiple
81 tty device support and simultaneous X and tty frame support works
82 fine. Emacsclient has been extended to support opening new tty and X
83 frames. It has been changed open new Emacs frames by default.
84
85 The multi-tty branch has been scheduled for inclusion in the next
86 major release of Emacs (version 23). I expect the merge into the
87 development trunk to occur sometime during next year (2005), after the
88 merge of the Unicode branch.
89
90 Tested on GNU/Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Please let me
91 know if you succeed or fail to use it on other platforms---I'll have a
92 few tricky test cases for you.
93
94 Known problems:
95
96 * GTK support. If you compile your Emacs with the GTK
97 toolkit, some functionality of multi-tty will be lost.
98 In particular, closing an X display causes a crash.
99 Current releases of GTK have limitations and bugs that
100 prevent full-blown multi-display support in Emacs. Use the
101 Lucid toolkit if you want to see a complete feature set.
102
103 * The single-kboard mode.
104
105 If your multi-tty Emacs session seems to be frozen, you
106 probably have a recursive editing session or a pending
107 minibuffer prompt (which is a kind of recursive editing) on
108 another display. To unfreeze your session, switch to that
109 display and complete the recursive edit, for example by
110 pressing C-] (`abort-recursive-edit').
111
112 I am sorry to say that currently there is no way to break
113 out of this "single-kboard mode" from a frozen display. If
114 you are unable to switch to the display that locks the
115 others (for example because it is on a remote computer),
116 then you can use emacsclient to break out of all recursive
117 editing sessions:
118
119 emacsclient -e '(top-level)'
120
121 Note that this (perhaps) unintuitive behaviour is by design.
122 Single-kboard mode is required because of an intrinsic Emacs
123 limitation that is very hard to eliminate. (This limitation
124 is related to the single-threaded nature of Emacs.)
125
126 I plan to implement better user notification and support for
127 breaking out of single-kboard mode from locked displays.
128
129 * Mac, Windows and DOS support is broken, doesn't even
130 compile. Multiple display support will probably not provide
131 new Emacs features on these systems, but the multi-tty
132 branch changed a few low-level interfaces, and the
133 system-dependent source files need to be adapted
134 accordingly. The changes are mostly trivial, so almost
135 anyone can help, if only by compiling the branch and
136 reporting the compiler errors. (It is not worth to do this
137 yet, though.)
138
139
140 HOW TO GET THE BRANCH
141 ---------------------
142
143 The branch uses GNU Arch (http://www.gnuarch.org) for version control.
144
145 Retrieving the latest version of the branch:
146
147 tla register-archive -f http://lorentey.hu/arch/2004/
148 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
149
150 This incantation uses my private archive mirror that is hosted on a
151 relatively low-bandwidth site; if you are outside Hungary, you will
152 probably want to you use my secondary mirror: (Note that the -f option
153 will overwrite the archive location if you have previously registered
154 the Hungarian one.)
155
156 tla register-archive -f http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
157 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
158
159 http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/arch/2004
160
161 The Arch supermirror provides mirroring services for all public Arch
162 repositories. We have a mirror there, too, if you prefer.
163
164 tla register-archive -f http://mirrors.sourcecontrol.net/lorentey%40elte.hu--2004
165 tla get lorentey@elte.hu--2004/emacs--multi-tty <directory>
166
167 My GPG key id is 0FB27A3F; it is available from
168 hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net/, or from my homepage at
169 http://lorentey.hu/rolam/gpg.html)
170
171 Don't worry if the above checkout takes a few minutes to complete;
172 once you have a source tree, updating it to the latest revision will
173 be _much_ faster. Use the following command for the update:
174
175 tla replay
176
177 You can find more information about Arch on http://wiki.gnuarch.org/.
178 It's a wonderful source control system, I highly recommend it.
179
180 If you don't have tla, the branch has a homepage from which you can
181 download conventional patches against Emacs CVS HEAD:
182
183 http://lorentey.hu/project/emacs.html
184
185 DEBIAN PACKAGES
186 ---------------
187
188 If you run Debian, or a distribution based on Debian, you are welcome
189 to use our binary packages; put these lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list:
190
191 # Multi-tty Emacs
192 deb http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt ./
193 deb-src http://aszt.inf.elte.hu/~lorentey/mirror/apt ./
194
195 Note that these packages are intended solely to provide an easy way to
196 test the new multi-tty features. They are not to be taken as Emacs
197 releases, and it's a mistake to expect robust operation or any kind of
198 timely support for them. Do not install them, unless you'd like to
199 have your editor crash on you.
200
201
202 COMPILATION
203 -----------
204
205 The multi-tty branch is compiled the same way as Emacs itself:
206
207 make maintainer-clean # (If you have compiled Emacs before)
208
209 ./configure <your favourite options>
210 make bootstrap
211 make install
212
213 If you have strange compilation errors, they may be caused by old
214 *.elc files that are left over from an earlier bootstrap. The `make
215 maintainer-clean' target deletes them, so it is a good idea to run
216 that before reporting a bug. (Emacs requires a clean recompilation
217 after certain kinds of source code changes.)
218
219 TESTING
220 -------
221
222 To test the multi-tty branch, start up the Emacs server with the
223 following commands:
224
225 emacs
226 M-x server-start
227
228 and then (from a shell prompt on another terminal) start emacsclient
229 with
230 emacsclient -t /optional/file/names... (for a tty frame)
231 emacsclient /optional/file/names... (for an X frame)
232
233 (Make sure both emacs and emacsclient are multi-tty versions.)
234 You'll hopefully have two fully working, independent frames on
235 separate terminals. The new frame is closed automatically when you
236 finish editing the specified files (C-x #), but delete-frame (C-x 5 0)
237 also works. Of course, you can create frames on more than two tty
238 devices.
239
240 Creating new frames on the same tty with C-x 5 2 works, and they
241 behave the same way as in previous Emacs versions. If you exit emacs,
242 all terminals should be restored to their previous states.
243
244 This is work in progress, and probably full of bugs. It is a good
245 idea to run emacs from gdb, so that you'll have a live instance to
246 debug if something goes wrong. Please send me your bug reports on our
247 mailing list: multi-tty@lists.fnord.hu
248
249 TIPS & TRICKS
250 -------------
251
252 I think the best way to use the new Emacs is to have it running inside
253 a disconnected GNU screen session, and always use emacsclient for
254 normal work. One advantage of this is that not a single keystroke of
255 your work will be lost if the display device that you are using
256 crashes, or the network connection times out, or whatever. (I had an
257 extremely unstable X server for some time while I was developing these
258 patches, and running Emacs this way has saved me a number of M-x
259 recover-session invocations.)
260
261 I use the following two bash scripts to handle my Emacs sessions:
262
263 -------------------------------------------------------connect-emacs--
264 #!/bin/bash
265 # Usage: connect-emacs <name> <args>...
266 #
267 # Connects to the Emacs instance called NAME. Starts up the instance
268 # if it is not already running. The rest of the arguments are passed
269 # to emacsclient.
270
271 name="$1"
272 shift
273
274 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
275 echo "Usage: connect_emacs <name> <args>..." >&2
276 exit 1
277 fi
278 preload-emacs "$name" wait
279 /usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-multi-tty -s "$name" "$@"
280 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
281
282 -------------------------------------------------------preload-emacs--
283 #!/bin/bash
284 # Usage: preload-emacs <name> [<waitp>]
285 #
286 # Preloads the Emacs instance called NAME in a detached screen
287 # session. Does nothing if the instance is already running. If WAITP
288 # is non-empty, the function waits until the server starts up and
289 # creates its socket; otherwise it returns immediately.
290
291 name="$1"
292 waitp="$2"
293 screendir="/var/run/screen/S-$USER"
294 serverdir="/tmp/emacs$UID"
295 emacs=/usr/bin/emacs-multi-tty # Or wherever you installed your multi-tty Emacs
296
297 if [ -z "$name" ]; then
298 echo "Usage: preload_emacs <name> [<waitp>]" >&2
299 exit 1
300 fi
301
302 if [ ! -e "$screendir"/*."$name" ]; then
303 if [ -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; then
304 # Delete leftover socket (for the wait option)
305 rm "$serverdir/$name"
306 fi
307 screen -dmS "$name" "$emacs" -nw --eval "(setq server-name \"$name\")" -f server-start
308 fi
309 if [ ! -z "$waitp" ]; then
310 while [ ! -e "$serverdir/$name" ]; do sleep 0.1; done
311 fi
312 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
313
314 I have the following in my profile to have two instances automatically
315 preloaded for editing and email:
316
317 preload-emacs editor
318 preload-emacs gnus
319
320 It is useful to set up short aliases for connect-emacs. I use the
321 following:
322
323 alias edit="connect-emacs editor"
324 alias e=edit
325 alias et="connect-emacs editor -t"
326 alias gnus="connect-emacs gnus"
327
328
329 CHANGELOG
330 ---------
331
332 See arch logs.
333
334
335 NEWS
336 ----
337
338 For the NEWS file: (Needs much, much work)
339
340 ** Support for multiple terminal devices has been added.
341
342 *** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal
343 type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'.
344
345 *** You can test for the presence of multiple terminal support by
346 testing for the `multi-tty' feature.
347
348 *** Emacsclient has been extended to support opening a new terminal
349 frame. Its behaviour has been changed to open a new Emacs frame by
350 default. Use the -c option to get the old behavior of opening
351 files in the currently selected Emacs frame.
352
353 *** A make-frame-on-tty function has been added to make it easier to
354 create frames on new terminals.
355
356 *** New functions: frame-tty-name, frame-tty-type, delete-tty,
357 terminal-local-value, set-terminal-local-value
358
359 terminal-id, terminal-parameters, terminal-parameter,
360 set-terminal-parameter
361
362 *** New variables: global-key-translation-map
363
364 *** The keymaps key-translation-map and function-key-map are now
365 terminal-local.
366
367 ** Support for simultaneous graphical and terminal frames has been
368 added.
369
370 *** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a terminal
371 session, and `make-frame-on-tty' works during a graphical session.
372
373 *** The `window-system' variable has been made frame-local.
374
375 *** The new `initial-window-system' variable contains the
376 `window-system' value for the first frame.
377
378 *** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support.
379
380
381 * * *
382
383 (The rest of this file consists of my development notes and as such it
384 is probably not very interesting for anyone else.)
385
386 THINGS TO DO
387 ------------
388
389 ** xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
390 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
391 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
392
393 ** Consider the `tty-type' frame parameter and the `display-tty-type'
394 function. They serve the exact same purpose. I think it may be
395 a good idea to eliminate one of them, preferably `tty-type'.
396
397 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
398 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
399 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
400 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
401
402 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
403 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
404 for the changes. (It needs to look at
405 default-frame-background-mode.)
406
407 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
408 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
409
410 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
411 instead of delete-frame-functions),
412 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
413
414 ** Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
415 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
416 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
417 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
418
419 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
420 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
421 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
422 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
423 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
424 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
425 idea how this could happen.
426
427 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
428 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
429
430 ** Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
431 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
432 compatibility definition)?
433
434 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
435 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
436 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
437
438 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
439 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
440 for the following names:
441
442 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
443 display-color-p terminal-color-p
444 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
445 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
446 display-images-p terminal-images-p
447 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
448 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
449 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
450 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
451 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
452 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
453 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
454 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
455 display-planes terminal-planes
456 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
457 display-save-under terminal-save-under
458 display-screens terminal-screens
459 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
460 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
461 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
462 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
463
464 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
465 can be renamed without aliases:
466
467 display-controlling-tty-p terminal-controlling-tty-p
468 display-list terminal-list
469 display-live-p terminal-live-p
470 display-name terminal-name
471 display-tty-type terminal-tty-type
472 frame-display terminal-of-frame
473 delete-display delete-terminal
474
475 ** The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
476 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
477 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
478 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
479 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
480 accessed reliably only using the hackish
481 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
482
483 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
484 and these more conventional configuration variables.
485 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
486 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
487 value of `function-key-map'.
488
489 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
490 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
491 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
492 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
493 Nicolaescu.)
494
495 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
496 under X. This is very confusing.
497
498 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
499 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
500 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
501 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
502
503 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
504 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
505 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
506 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
507 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
508 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
509 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
510 on the locked out displays.
511
512 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
513 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
514 session:
515
516 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
517 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
518 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
519 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
520 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
521 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
522 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
523 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
524 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
525 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
526
527 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
528 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
529 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
530 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
531 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
532 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
533 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
534 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
535 X server.
536
537 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
538
539 ** normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
540 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber).
541
542 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
543 to accept display ids.
544
545 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
546 new global function.
547
548 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
549 be replaced with a clean design.
550
551 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
552 standard-display-european should be display-local.
553
554 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
555 the current display should be considered. This might involve
556 extending `get-buffer-window'.
557
558 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
559 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
560 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
561 definition.
562
563 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
564 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
565
566 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
567
568 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
569
570 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
571
572 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
573
574 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
575
576 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
577 argument:
578
579 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
580 => nil
581
582 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
583
584 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
585 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
586 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
587 options. Patches are welcome.) :-)
588
589 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
590 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
591 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
592 implement.
593
594 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
595 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
596 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
597
598 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
599 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
600 but it's so quick it isn't noticable.
601
602 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
603
604 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
605 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
606 later, with emacsclient.)
607
608 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
609 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
610 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
611 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
612
613 ** Fix W32 support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
614 current state of W32-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
615 are not useful; before starting work on W32 support, revert to
616 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
617
618 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
619 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
620 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
621 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
622
623 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
624
625 ** Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
626 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
627 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
628 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
629 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
630 to understand input.)
631
632 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
633
634 DIARY OF CHANGES
635 ----------------
636
637 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
638
639 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
640
641 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
642 complete.)
643
644 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
645
646 (Done, but needs review.)
647
648 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
649
650 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
651
652 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
653
654 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
655 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
656 SIGIO!)
657
658 (Update: They do, now.)
659
660 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
661
662 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
663 terminal only.
664
665 (Done, by trivially modifiying next_frame and prev_frame.)
666
667 -- Support different terminal sizes.
668
669 (Done, no problem.)
670
671 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
672 problematic.)
673
674 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
675 though.)
676
677 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
678 to Emacs.
679
680 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
681
682 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
683 just the initial terminal.
684
685 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
686
687 -- Fix redisplay problems.
688
689 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
690 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
691
692 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
693 resized.
694
695 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
696
697 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
698 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
699 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
700
701 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
702 supported multiple frames.)
703
704 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
705
706 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
707 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
708 raw ttys!)
709
710 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
711 extend that somehow.)
712
713 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
714 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
715 send signals on input.)
716
717 (Update^3: Not any more.)
718
719 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
720 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
721 default.
722
723 (Done.)
724
725 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
726 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
727 really support multiple terminal types.
728
729 (Done. It was not fun.)
730
731 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
732 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
733 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
734
735 (Done.)
736
737 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
738 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
739 Emacs.
740
741 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
742 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
743 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
744
745 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
746 that terminal is closed.
747
748 (Done.)
749
750 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
751
752 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
753
754 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
755
756 (Done.)
757
758 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
759
760 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
761
762 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
763 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
764
765 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
766 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
767 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
768
769 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
770 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
771
772 (Seems to be working OK.)
773
774 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
775 trigger it, try the following shell command:
776
777 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
778
779 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
780 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
781 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
782 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
783 support?)
784
785 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
786 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
787 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
788 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
789 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
790 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
791
792 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
793 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
794 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
795
796 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
797 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
798 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
799 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
800 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
801 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
802 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
803
804 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
805 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
806 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
807 for stdin/out.
808
809 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
810 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
811
812 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
813 fcntl kernel behaviour could be emulated by emacsclient.
814
815 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
816 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
817
818 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
819 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
820 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
821 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
822 frame.
823
824 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
825 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
826
827 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
828 doing -t.
829
830 (Done.)
831
832 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
833 name and the type is sufficient.
834
835 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
836
837 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
838
839 (Done, see delete-tty.)
840
841 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
842 all members.
843
844 (Done.)
845
846 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
847 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
848
849 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
850
851 -- Fix X support.
852
853 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
854
855 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
856 tricky. Or maybe not.)
857
858 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
859 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
860 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
861
862 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
863
864 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
865 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
866 frame's kboard from there.)
867
868 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
869 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value value in
870 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
871
872 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
873 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
874
875 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
876
877 (Done.)
878
879 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
880
881 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
882
883 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
884 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
885 with it.
886
887 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
888 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
889
890 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
891 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
892 delete-frame-functions.
893
894 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
895 use it.)
896
897 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
898 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
899
900 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
901
902 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
903
904 (Now it seems to work all right.)
905
906 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
907 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
908
909 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
910 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
911 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
912
913 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
914 exit if the user presses C-c there.
915
916 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
917 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
918 in general.)
919
920 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
921 fails to start without a controlling tty.
922
923 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
924 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
925
926 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
927 backends.
928
929 (Done.)
930
931 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
932 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
933 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
934
935 (Done, broking interactive temacs.)
936
937 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
938
939 (Fixed.)
940
941 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
942 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
943 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
944 thing.
945
946 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
947
948 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
949
950 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
951 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
952 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
953 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
954 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
955 be a bad idea.)
956
957 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
958 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
959
960 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
961
962 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
963 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
964
965 getpid() = 30284
966 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
967 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
968 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
969 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
970 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
971 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
972 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
973 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
974 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
975 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
976 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
977
978 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
979 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
980
981 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
982 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
983 read_avail_input.
984
985 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
986 input_wait_mask in init_process. The select call in
987 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
988 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
989
990 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
991 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
992
993 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
994 ttys to their default states.
995
996 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
997
998 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
999
1000 (Done.)
1001
1002 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
1003 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
1004 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
1005 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
1006 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
1007 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
1008 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
1009
1010 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
1011 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
1012 graphical.)
1013
1014 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
1015 Romain Francoise)
1016
1017 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
1018
1019 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
1020 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
1021
1022 (Fixed.)
1023
1024 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
1025 multi-display session.
1026
1027 (Fixed.)
1028
1029 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
1030 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
1031 gives unexpected results.
1032
1033 (Fixed.)
1034
1035 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
1036 from a shell script.
1037
1038 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
1039 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
1040 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
1041
1042 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
1043 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
1044 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
1045 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
1046 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
1047 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
1048
1049 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
1050 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
1051 related to multi-tty.)
1052
1053 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
1054 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
1055 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
1056 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
1057 works right now.)
1058
1059 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
1060 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
1061 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
1062
1063 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
1064 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialialized again.
1065 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
1066 startup.)
1067
1068 (This is gone.)
1069
1070 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
1071 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
1072 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
1073 work for me.
1074
1075 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
1076 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1077 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1078 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1079 be removed.)
1080
1081 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1082 Think up a compatible solution.
1083
1084 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1085
1086 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1087 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1088 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1089 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1090 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1091
1092 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1093 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1094
1095 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1096 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1097 manual.)
1098
1099 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1100 frame-local variables.)
1101
1102 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1103 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1104 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1105 with a different locale.)
1106 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1107 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1108 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1109 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1110
1111 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1112 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1113 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1114
1115 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1116
1117 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1118 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1119
1120 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1121 => Implemented.
1122
1123 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1124 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1125
1126 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1127 => Implemented.
1128
1129 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1130 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1131
1132 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1133 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1134 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1135
1136 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1137 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1138 ":0.0")
1139 => Implemented as display-name.
1140
1141 etc.
1142
1143 See next issue why this is necessary.
1144
1145 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1146 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1147
1148 (Done.)
1149
1150 -- The following needs to be supported:
1151
1152 $ emacsclient -t
1153 C-z
1154 $ emacsclient -t
1155 (This fails now.)
1156
1157 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1158 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1159 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1160 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1161 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1162
1163 (Done.)
1164
1165 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1166 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1167 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1168 new default?
1169
1170 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1171
1172 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1173 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1174
1175 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1176
1177 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1178 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1179 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1180 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1181 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1182 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1183
1184 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1185
1186 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1187 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1188 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1189 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1190
1191 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1192 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1193
1194 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1195
1196 (Done.)
1197
1198 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1199 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1200 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1201 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1202 frame is selected.
1203
1204 (Done.)
1205
1206
1207 ;;; arch-tag: 8da1619e-2e79-41a8-9ac9-a0485daad17d
1208