Prevent resource allocation explosion when C-x 5 2 is used on xterms.
[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 ** Go through lisp/term/*.el once more and protect terminal-local
390 initializations with '(when (eq 1 (length (frames-on-display-list)))'
391 as in xterm.el. This is to prevent resource allocation explosions
392 when C-x 5 2 is used repeatedly.
393
394 ** Dan Nicolaescu writes:
395 > The terminal initialization code still has some issues.
396 > This can be seen when using emacsclient -t on a 256 color xterm. The
397 > terminal frame is only created with 8 color.
398 > The reason is that terminal-init-xterm calls
399 > xterm-register-default-colors which calls (display-color-cells (selected-frame))
400 > and probably `selected-frame' is not completely setup at that time.
401
402 ** emacsclient --no-wait and --eval is currently broken.
403
404 ** xt-mouse.el needs to be adapted for multi-tty. It currently
405 signals an error on kill-emacs under X, which prevents the user
406 from exiting Emacs. (Reported by Mnemonikk on freenode.)
407
408 ** The handling of lisp/term/*.el, and frame creation in general, is a
409 big, big mess. How come the terminal-specific file is loaded by
410 tty-create-frame-with-faces? I don't think it is necessary to load
411 these files for each frame; once per terminal should be enough.
412
413 ** Fix frame-set-background-mode in this branch. It was recently
414 changed in CVS, and frame.el in multi-tty has not yet been adapted
415 for the changes. (It needs to look at
416 default-frame-background-mode.)
417
418 ** I think `(set-)terminal-local-value' and the terminal parameter
419 mechanism should be integrated into a single framework.
420
421 ** Add the following hooks: after-delete-frame-hook (for server.el,
422 instead of delete-frame-functions),
423 after-delete-terminal-functions, after-create-terminal-functions.
424
425 ** Having {reset,init}_all_sys_modes in set-input-mode breaks arrow
426 keys on non-selected terminals under screen, and sometimes on other
427 terminal types as well. The other function keys continue to work
428 fine. Sometimes faces on these screens become garbled.
429
430 This only seems to affect displays that are of the same terminfo
431 type as the selected one. Interestingly, in screen Emacs normally
432 reports the up arrow key as `M-o A', but after the above SNAFU, it
433 complains about `M-[ a'. UNIX ttys are a complete mystery to me,
434 but it seems the reset-reinitialize cycle somehow leaves the
435 non-selected terminals in a different state than usual. I have no
436 idea how this could happen.
437
438 Currently set-input-mode resets only the currently selected
439 terminal, which seems to somehow work around the problem.
440
441 ** Fix set-input-mode for multi-tty. It's a truly horrible interface;
442 what if we'd blow it up into several separate functions (with a
443 compatibility definition)?
444
445 ** BULK RENAME: The `display-' prefix of new Lisp-level functions
446 conflicts with stuff like `display-time-mode'. Use `device-'
447 or `terminal-' instead. I think I prefer `terminal-'.
448
449 It turns out that most of the offending Lisp functions were defined
450 in the trunk. Therefore, compatibility aliases should be defined
451 for the following names:
452
453 display-color-cells terminal-color-cells
454 display-color-p terminal-color-p
455 display-graphic-p terminal-graphic-p
456 display-grayscale-p terminal-grayscale-p
457 display-images-p terminal-images-p
458 display-mm-height terminal-mm-height
459 display-mm-width terminal-mm-width
460 display-mouse-p terminal-mouse-p
461 display-multi-font-p terminal-multi-font-p
462 display-multi-frame-p terminal-multi-frame-p
463 display-pixel-height terminal-pixel-height
464 display-pixel-width terminal-pixel-width
465 display-pixels-per-inch terminal-pixels-per-inch
466 display-planes terminal-planes
467 display-popup-menus-p terminal-popup-menus-p
468 display-save-under terminal-save-under
469 display-screens terminal-screens
470 display-supports-face-attributes-p terminal-supports-face-attributes-p
471 display-visual-class terminal-visual-class
472 framep-on-display framep-on-terminal
473 frames-on-display-list frames-on-terminal-list
474
475 The following functions were introduced in the multi-tty branch, and
476 can be renamed without aliases:
477
478 display-controlling-tty-p terminal-controlling-tty-p
479 display-list terminal-list
480 display-live-p terminal-live-p
481 display-name terminal-name
482 display-tty-type terminal-tty-type
483 frame-display terminal-of-frame
484 delete-display delete-terminal
485
486 ** The semantics of terminal-local variables are confusing; it is not
487 clear what binding is in effect in any given time. See if
488 current_kboard (or at least the terminal-local bindings exported to
489 Lisp) might be changed to be tied to the selected frame instead.
490 Currently, `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' may be
491 accessed reliably only using the hackish
492 `(set-)terminal-local-value' functions.
493
494 Perhaps there should be a difference between `last-command' &co.
495 and these more conventional configuration variables.
496 (E.g. `symbol-value' would use current_kboard to access
497 `last-command', but SELECTED_FRAME()->display->kboard to get the
498 value of `function-key-map'.
499
500 ** The single-keyboard mode of MULTI_KBOARD is extremely confusing
501 sometimes; Emacs does not respond to stimuli from other keyboards.
502 At least a beep or a message would be important, if the single-mode
503 is still required to prevent interference. (Reported by Dan
504 Nicolaescu.)
505
506 Update: selecting a region with the mouse enables single_kboard
507 under X. This is very confusing.
508
509 Update: After discussions with Richard Stallman, this will be
510 resolved by having locked displays warn the user to wait, and
511 introducing a complex protocol to remotely bail out of
512 single-kboard mode by pressing C-g.
513
514 Update: Warning the user is not trivial to implement, as Emacs has
515 only one echo area, shared by all frames. Ideally the warning
516 should not be displayed on the display that is locking the others.
517 Perhaps the high probability of user confusion caused by
518 single_kboard mode deserves a special case in the display code.
519 Alternatively, it might be good enough to signal single_kboard mode
520 by changing the modelines or some other frame-local display element
521 on the locked out displays.
522
523 ** The session management module is prone to crashes when the X
524 connection is closed and then later I try to connect to a new X
525 session:
526
527 #0 0xb7ebc806 in SmcGetIceConnection () from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6
528 #1 0x080e6641 in x_session_check_input (bufp=0xbf86c9c0) at xsmfns.c:144
529 #2 0x080d3bbc in XTread_socket (device=0xa722ff8, expected=1, hold_quit=0xbf86ca90) at xterm.c:7037
530 #3 0x080fa404 in read_avail_input (expected=1) at keyboard.c:6696
531 #4 0x080fa4ca in handle_async_input () at keyboard.c:6900
532 #5 0x080d51fa in x_term_init (display_name=162628899, xrm_option=0x0, resource_name=0x857068c "emacs") at xterm.c:10622
533 #6 0x080d920e in x_display_info_for_name (name=162628899) at xfns.c:3975
534 #7 0x080d92f9 in check_x_display_info (object=1) at xfns.c:274
535 #8 0x080d97b8 in Fx_create_frame (parms=151221485) at xfns.c:3016
536 #9 0x0815bf72 in Ffuncall (nargs=2, args=0xbf86ceec) at eval.c:2851
537
538 I installed a workaround to prevent this. The X session manager is
539 only contacted when the very first display in the Emacs session is
540 an X display. Also, x_delete_display() on this display aborts
541 session management, and XTread_socket only calls
542 x_session_check_input when it is called for the display that the
543 session was opened on. While this does not really fix the bug, it
544 makes it much less frequent, because session manager support will
545 not normally be enabled when Emacs can survive the shutdown of the
546 X server.
547
548 See if xsmfns.c should be updated.
549
550 ** normal-erase-is-backspace-mode in simple.el needs to be updated for
551 multi-tty (rep. by Dan Waber).
552
553 ** Hunt down display-related functions in frame.el and extend them all
554 to accept display ids.
555
556 ** rif->flush_display_optional (NULL) calls should be replaced by a
557 new global function.
558
559 ** The set-locale-environment hack (adding the DISPLAY option) should
560 be replaced with a clean design.
561
562 ** standard-display-table should be display-local.
563 standard-display-european should be display-local.
564
565 ** With iswitchb-default-method set to 'always-frame, only frames on
566 the current display should be considered. This might involve
567 extending `get-buffer-window'.
568
569 ** Have a look at Vlocale_coding_system. Seems like it would be a
570 tedious job to localize it, although most references use it for
571 interfacing with libc and are therefore OK with the global
572 definition.
573
574 Exceptions found so far: x-select-text and
575 x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value.
576
577 ** Have a look at fatal_error_hook.
578
579 ** Have a look at set_frame_matrix_frame.
580
581 ** Check if we got term-setup-hook right.
582
583 ** I think tip_frame should be display-local.
584
585 ** Check display reference count handling in x_create_tip_frame.
586
587 ** make-frame does not correctly handle extra parameters in its
588 argument:
589
590 (frame-parameter (make-frame (list (cons 'foobar 42))) 'foobar)
591 => nil
592
593 (This is likely an error in the CVS trunk.)
594
595 ** Dan Nicolaescu suggests that -nw should be added as an alias for -t
596 in emacsclient. Good idea. (Alas, implementing this is not
597 trivial, getopt_long does not seem to support two-letter ``short''
598 options. Patches are welcome.) :-)
599
600 ** Mark Plaksin suggests that emacsclient should accept the same
601 X-related command-line arguments as Emacs. Most of the X-related
602 argument-handling is done in Lisp, so this should be quite easy to
603 implement.
604
605 ** Gergely Nagy suggests that C-x # should only kill the current
606 frame, not any other emacsclient frame that may have the same file
607 opened for editing. I think I agree with him.
608
609 ** Very strange bug: visible-bell does not work on secondary
610 terminals in xterm and konsole. The screen does flicker a bit,
611 but it's so quick it isn't noticable.
612
613 ** Move baud_rate to struct display.
614
615 ** Implement support for starting an interactive Emacs session without
616 an initial frame. (The user would connect to it and open frames
617 later, with emacsclient.)
618
619 ** Fix Mac support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
620 current state of Mac-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
621 are not useful; before starting work on Mac support, revert to
622 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
623
624 ** Fix W32 support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
625 current state of W32-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
626 are not useful; before starting work on W32 support, revert to
627 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
628
629 ** Fix DOS support (I can't do this entirely myself). Note that the
630 current state of DOS-specific source files in the multi-tty tree
631 are not useful; before starting work on DOS support, revert to
632 pristine, pre-multi-tty versions.
633
634 ** Do a grep on XXX and ?? for more issues.
635
636 ** Understand Emacs's low-level input system (it's black magic) :-)
637 What exactly does interrupt_input do? I tried to disable it for
638 raw secondary tty support, but it does not seem to do anything
639 useful. (Update: Look again. X unconditionally enables this, maybe
640 that's why raw terminal support is broken again. I really do need
641 to understand input.)
642
643 ** Fix stuff_char for multi-tty. Doesn't seem to be of high priority.
644
645 DIARY OF CHANGES
646 ----------------
647
648 (ex-TODO items with explanations.)
649
650 -- Introduce a new struct for terminal devices.
651
652 (Done, see struct tty_output. The list of members is not yet
653 complete.)
654
655 -- Change the bootstrap procedure to initialize tty_list.
656
657 (Done, but needs review.)
658
659 -- Change make-terminal-frame to support specifying another tty.
660
661 (Done, new frame parameters: `tty' and `tty-type'.)
662
663 -- Implement support for reading from multiple terminals.
664
665 (Done, read_avail_input tries to read from each terminal, until one
666 succeeds. MULTI_KBOARD is not used. Secondary terminals don't send
667 SIGIO!)
668
669 (Update: They do, now.)
670
671 (Update2: After enabling X, they don't.)
672
673 -- other-frame should cycle through the frames on the `current'
674 terminal only.
675
676 (Done, by trivially modifiying next_frame and prev_frame.)
677
678 -- Support different terminal sizes.
679
680 (Done, no problem.)
681
682 -- Make sure terminal resizes are handled gracefully. (Could be
683 problematic.)
684
685 (Done. We don't get automatic SIGWINCH for additional ttys,
686 though.)
687
688 -- Extend emacsclient to automatically open a new tty when it connects
689 to Emacs.
690
691 (Done. It's an ugly hack, needs more work.)
692
693 -- Redisplay must refresh the topmost frame on *all* terminals, not
694 just the initial terminal.
695
696 (Done, but introduced an ugly redisplay problems. Ugh.)
697
698 -- Fix redisplay problems.
699
700 (Done; it turned out that the entire Wcm structure must be moved
701 inside tty_output. Why didn't I catch this earlier?)
702
703 -- Provide a way for emacsclient to tell Emacs that the tty has been
704 resized.
705
706 (Done, simply forward the SIGWINCH signal.)
707
708 -- Each keypress should automatically select the frame corresponding
709 to the terminal that it was coming from. This means that Emacs
710 must know from which terminal the last keyboard event came from.
711
712 (Done, it was quite simple, the input event system already
713 supported multiple frames.)
714
715 -- Fix SIGIO issue with secondary terminals.
716
717 (Done, emacsclient signals Emacs after writing to the proxy pseudo
718 terminal. Note that this means that multi-tty does not work with
719 raw ttys!)
720
721 (Update: This is bullshit. There is a read_input_waiting function,
722 extend that somehow.)
723
724 (Update of update: The first update was not right either, extending
725 read_input_waiting was not necessary. Secondary ttys do seem to
726 send signals on input.)
727
728 (Update^3: Not any more.)
729
730 -- Make make-terminal-frame look up the `tty' and `tty-type' frame
731 parameters from the currently selected terminal before the global
732 default.
733
734 (Done.)
735
736 -- Put all cached terminal escape sequences into struct tty_output.
737 Currently, they are still stored in global variables, so we don't
738 really support multiple terminal types.
739
740 (Done. It was not fun.)
741
742 -- Implement sane error handling after initialization. (Currently
743 emacs exits if you specify a bad terminal type.) The helpful error
744 messages must still be provided when Emacs starts.
745
746 (Done.)
747
748 -- Implement terminal deletion, i.e., deleting local frames, closing
749 the tty device and restoring its previous state without exiting
750 Emacs.
751
752 (Done, but at the moment only called when an error happens during
753 initialization. There is a memory corruption error around this
754 somewhere.) (Update: now it is fully enabled.)
755
756 -- Implement automatic deletion of terminals when the last frame on
757 that terminal is closed.
758
759 (Done.)
760
761 -- Restore tty screen after closing the terminal.
762
763 (Done, we do the same as Emacs 21.2 for all terminals.)
764
765 -- 'TERM=dumb src/emacs' does not restore the terminal state.
766
767 (Done.)
768
769 -- C-g should work on secondary terminals.
770
771 (Done, but the binding is not configurable.)
772
773 -- Deal with SIGHUP in Emacs and in emacsclient. (After this, the
774 server-frames may be removed from server.el.)
775
776 (Done, nothing to do. It seems that Emacs does not receive SIGHUP
777 from secondary ttys, which is actually a good thing.) (Update: I
778 think it would be a bad idea to remove server-frames.)
779
780 -- Change emacsclient/server.el to support the -t argument better,
781 i.e. automatically close the socket when the frame is closed.
782
783 (Seems to be working OK.)
784
785 -- Fix mysterious memory corruption error with tty deletion. To
786 trigger it, try the following shell command:
787
788 while true; do TERM=no-such-terminal-definition emacsclient -h; done
789
790 Emacs usually dumps core after a few dozen iterations. (The bug
791 seems to be related to the xfreeing or bzeroing of
792 tty_output.Wcm. Maybe there are outside references to struct Wcm?
793 Why were these vars collected into a struct before multi-tty
794 support?)
795
796 (Done. Whew. It turned out that the problem had nothing to do
797 with hypothetical external references to Wcm, or any other
798 tty_output component; it was simply that delete_tty closed the
799 filehandles of secondary ttys twice, resulting in fclose doubly
800 freeing memory. Utterly trivial matter. I love the C's memory
801 management, it puts hair on your chest.)
802
803 -- Support raw secondary terminals. (Note that SIGIO works only on
804 the controlling terminal.) Hint: extend read_input_waiting for
805 multiple ttys and hopefully this will be fixed.
806
807 (Done, it seems to have been working already for some time. It
808 seems F_SETOWN does work, after all. Not sure what made it fail
809 earlier, but it seems to be fixed (there were several changes
810 around request_sigio, maybe one of them did it).
811 read_input_waiting is only used in sys_select, don't change
812 it.) (Update: After adding X support, it's broken again.)
813 (Update^2: No it isn't.) :-)
814
815 -- Find out why does Emacs abort when it wants to close its
816 controlling tty. Hint: chan_process[] array. Hey, maybe
817 noninterrupt-IO would work, too? Update: no, there is no process
818 for stdin/out.
819
820 (Done. Added add/delete_keyboard_wait_descriptor to
821 term_init/delete_tty. The hint was right, in a way.)
822
823 -- Issue with SIGIO: it needs to be disabled during redisplay. See if
824 fcntl kernel behaviour could be emulated by emacsclient.
825
826 (Done. Simply disabled the SIGIO emulation hack in emacsclient.)
827 (Update: it was added back.) (Update^2: and removed again.)
828
829 -- server.el: There are issues with saving files in buffers of closed
830 clients. Try editing a file with emacsclient -f, and (without
831 saving it) do a delete-frame. The frame is closed without
832 question, and a surprising confirmation prompt appears in another
833 frame.
834
835 (Done. delete-frame now asks for confirmation if it still has
836 pending buffers, and modified buffers don't seem to be deleted.)
837
838 -- emacsclient.el, server.el: Handle eval or file open errors when
839 doing -t.
840
841 (Done.)
842
843 -- Make parts of struct tty_output accessible from Lisp. The device
844 name and the type is sufficient.
845
846 (Done, see frame-tty-name and frame-tty-type.)
847
848 -- Export delete_tty to the Lisp environment, for emacsclient.
849
850 (Done, see delete-tty.)
851
852 -- Get rid of the accessor macros in termchar.h, or define macros for
853 all members.
854
855 (Done.)
856
857 -- Move device-specific parameters (like costs) commonly used by
858 device backends to a common, device-dependent structure.
859
860 (Done. See struct display_method in termhooks.h.)
861
862 -- Fix X support.
863
864 (Done. Well, it seems to be working.)
865
866 -- Allow simultaneous X and tty frames. (Handling input could be
867 tricky. Or maybe not.)
868
869 (Done. Allowed, that is. It is currently extremely unstable, to
870 the point of being unusable. The rif variable causes constant
871 core dumps. Handling input is indeed tricky.)
872
873 -- Rewrite multi-tty input in terms of MULTI_KBOARD.
874
875 (Done. In fact, there was no need to rewrite anything, I just
876 added a kboard member to tty_display_info, and initialized the
877 frame's kboard from there.)
878
879 -- Fix rif issue with X-tty combo sessions. IMHO the best thing to do
880 is to get rid of that global variable (and use the value value in
881 display_method, which is guaranteed to be correct).
882
883 (Done, did exactly that. Core dumps during combo sessions became
884 much rarer. In fact, I have not yet met a single one.)
885
886 -- Add multi-tty support to talk.el.
887
888 (Done.)
889
890 -- Clean up the source of emacsclient. It is a mess.
891
892 (Done, eliminated stupid proxy-pty kludge.)
893
894 -- Fix faces on tty frames during X-tty combo sessions. There is an
895 init_frame_faces call in init_sys_modes, see if there is a problem
896 with it.
897
898 (Done, there was a stupid mistake in
899 Ftty_supports_face_attributes_p. Colors are broken, though.)
900
901 -- C-x 5 2, C-x 5 o, C-x 5 0 on an emacsclient frame unexpectedly
902 exits emacsclient. This is a result of trying to be clever with
903 delete-frame-functions.
904
905 (Fixed, added delete-tty-after-functions, and changed server.el to
906 use it.)
907
908 -- Something with (maybe) multi-keyboard support broke function keys
909 and arrows on ttys during X+tty combo sessions. Debug this.
910
911 (I can't reproduce it, maybe the terminal type was wrong.)
912
913 -- Fix input from raw ttys (again).
914
915 (Now it seems to work all right.)
916
917 -- During an X-tty combo session, a (message "Hello") from a tty frame
918 goes to the X frame. Fix this.
919
920 (Done. There was a safeguard against writing to the initial
921 terminal frame during bootstrap which prevented echo_area_display
922 from working correctly on a tty frame during a combo session.)
923
924 -- If there are no frames on its controlling terminal, Emacs should
925 exit if the user presses C-c there.
926
927 (Done, as far as possible. See the SIGTERM comment in
928 interrupt_signal on why this seems to be impossible to solve this
929 in general.)
930
931 -- During an X session, Emacs seems to read from stdin. Also, Emacs
932 fails to start without a controlling tty.
933
934 (Fixed by replacing the troublesome termcap display with a dummy
935 bootstrap display during bootstrap.
936
937 -- Do tty output through struct display, like graphical display
938 backends.
939
940 (Done.)
941
942 -- Define an output_initial value for output_method for the initial
943 frame that is dumped with Emacs. Checking for this frame (e.g. in
944 cmd_error_internal) is ugly.
945
946 (Done, broking interactive temacs.)
947
948 -- The command `emacsclient -t -e '(delete-frame)'' fails to exit.
949
950 (Fixed.)
951
952 -- frame-creation-function should always create a frame that is on the
953 same display as the selected frame. Maybe frame-creation-function
954 should simply be removed and make-frame changed to do the right
955 thing.
956
957 (Done, with a nice hack. frame-creation-function is now frame-local.)
958
959 -- Fix C-g on raw ttys.
960
961 (Done. I disabled the interrupt/quit keys on all secondary
962 terminals, so Emacs sees C-g as normal input. This looks like an
963 overkill, because emacsclient has extra code to pass SIGINT to
964 Emacs, so C-g should remain the interrupt/quit key on emacsclient
965 frames. See the next entry why implementing this distinction would
966 be a bad idea.)
967
968 -- Make sure C-g goes to the right frame with ttys. This is hard, as
969 SIGINT doesn't have a tty parameter. :-(
970
971 (Done, the previous change fixes this as a pleasant side effect.)
972
973 -- I have seen a case when Emacs with multiple ttys fell into a loop
974 eating 100% of CPU time. Strace showed this loop:
975
976 getpid() = 30284
977 kill(30284, SIGIO) = 0
978 --- SIGIO (I/O possible) @ 0 (0) ---
979 ioctl(6, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
980 ioctl(5, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
981 ioctl(0, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0
982 sigreturn() = ? (mask now [])
983 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747760}, NULL) = 0
984 gettimeofday({1072842297, 747806}, NULL) = 0
985 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
986 select(9, [0 3 5 6], NULL, NULL, {0, 0}) = 2 (in [5 6], left {0, 0})
987 gettimeofday({1072842297, 748245}, NULL) = 0
988
989 I have seen something similar with a single X frame, but have not
990 been able to reproduce it for debugging.
991
992 Update: This may have been caused by checking for nread != 0
993 instead of nread > 0 after calling read_socket_hook in
994 read_avail_input.
995
996 (Fixed. This was caused by unconditionally including stdin in
997 input_wait_mask in init_process. The select call in
998 wait_reading_process_input always returned immediately, indicating
999 that there is pending input from stdin, which nobody read.
1000
1001 Note that the above strace output seems to be an unrelated but
1002 similar bug. I think that is now fixed.)
1003
1004 -- Exiting Emacs while there are emacsclient frames doesn't restore the
1005 ttys to their default states.
1006
1007 (This seems to be fixed by some previous change.)
1008
1009 -- Allow opening an X session after -nw.
1010
1011 (Done.)
1012
1013 -- Fix color handling during tty+X combo sessions. (It seems that tty
1014 sessions automatically convert the face colors to terminal colors
1015 when the face is loaded. This conversion must happen instead on
1016 the fly in write_glyphs, which might be problematic, as color
1017 approximation is currently done in lisp (term/tty-colors.el).)
1018 (Update: hm, colors seem to work fine if I start emacs with -nw and
1019 then create an X frame. Maybe it's just a small buglet somewhere.)
1020
1021 (Seems to be fixed. The problem was in startup.el, it did not
1022 initialize tty colors when the initial window system was
1023 graphical.)
1024
1025 -- emacs -nw --eval '(y-or-n-p "Foobar")' segfaults. (Reported by
1026 Romain Francoise)
1027
1028 (Fixed, there was a keyboard initialization problem.)
1029
1030 -- Fix interactive use of temacs. There are face-related SEGVs, most
1031 likely because of changes in realize_default_face, realize_face.
1032
1033 (Fixed.)
1034
1035 -- Don't exit Emacs when the last X connection fails during a
1036 multi-display session.
1037
1038 (Fixed.)
1039
1040 -- Dan Nicolaescu noticed that starting emacsclient on the same
1041 terminal device that is the controlling tty of the Emacs process
1042 gives unexpected results.
1043
1044 (Fixed.)
1045
1046 -- Istvan Marko reported that Emacs hang on ttys if it was started
1047 from a shell script.
1048
1049 (Fixed. There was a bug in the multi-tty version of
1050 narrow_foreground_group. tcsetpgrp blocks if it is called from a
1051 process that is not in the same process group as the tty.)
1052
1053 -- emacsclient -t from an Emacs term buffer does not work, complains
1054 about face problems. This can even lock up Emacs (if the recursive
1055 frame sets single_kboard). Update: the face problems are caused by
1056 bugs in term.el, not in multi-tty. The lockup is caused by
1057 single_kboard mode, and is not easily resolvable. The best thing to
1058 do is to simply refuse to create a tty frame of type `eterm'.
1059
1060 (Fixed, changed emacsclient to check for TERM=eterm. The face
1061 complaints seem to be caused by bugs in term.el; they are not
1062 related to multi-tty.)
1063
1064 -- Find out the best way to support suspending Emacs with multiple
1065 ttys. My guess: disable it on the controlling tty, but from other
1066 ttys pass it on to emacsclient somehow. (It is (I hope) trivial to
1067 extend emacsclient to handle suspend/resume. A `kill -STOP' almost
1068 works right now.)
1069
1070 (Done. I needed to play with signal handling and the server
1071 protocol a bit to make emacsclient behave as a normal UNIX program
1072 wrt foreground/background process groups.)
1073
1074 -- There is a flicker during the startup of `emacs -nw'; it's as if
1075 the terminal is initialized, reset and then initialialized again.
1076 Debug this. (Hint: narrow_foreground_group is called twice during
1077 startup.)
1078
1079 (This is gone.)
1080
1081 -- Robert Chassell has found serious copy-paste bugs with the
1082 multi-tty branch. There seem to be redisplay bugs while copying
1083 from X to a terminal frame. Copying accented characters do not
1084 work for me.
1085
1086 (Patch-124 should fix this, by changing the interprogram-*-function
1087 variables to be frame-local, as suggested by Mark Plaksin
1088 (thanks!). I think that the redisplay bugs are in fact not bugs,
1089 but delays caused by single_kboard --> perhaps MULTI_KBOARD should
1090 be removed.)
1091
1092 -- frame-creation-function was removed, which might be a bad idea.
1093 Think up a compatible solution.
1094
1095 (It was an internal interface that may be changed when necessary.)
1096
1097 -- Change Lisp code not to (getenv "TERM"); use the `tty-type' frame
1098 parameter or the frame-tty-type function instead. (M-x tags-search
1099 "TERM" helps with this.) Update: Actually, all getenv invocations
1100 should be checked for multi-tty compatibility, and an interface
1101 must be implemented to get the remote client's environment.
1102
1103 (Done. Only getenv calls in lisp/term/*.el were changed; other
1104 calls should be mostly left as they are.)
1105
1106 -- Add an elaborate mechanism for display-local variables. (There are
1107 already a few of these; search for `terminal-local' in the Elisp
1108 manual.)
1109
1110 (Not needed. Display-local variables could be emulated by
1111 frame-local variables.)
1112
1113 -- Emacs assumes that all terminal frames have the same locale
1114 settings as Emacs itself. This may lead to bogus results in a
1115 multi-locale setup. (E.g., while logging in from a remote client
1116 with a different locale.)
1117 (Update after new bugreport by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs:
1118 (at least) the structs terminal_coding and keyboard_coding in
1119 coding.c must be moved to struct display, and the Lisp interface
1120 [set-]keyboard-coding-system must be adapted for the change.)
1121
1122 (Fixed. Emacs now uses the locale settings as seen by the
1123 emacsclient process for server tty frames.)
1124 (Update: Not really; Vlocale_coding_system is still global.)
1125
1126 -- Make `struct display' accessible to Lisp programs. Accessor functions:
1127
1128 (displayp OBJECT): Returns t if OBJECT is a display.
1129 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1130
1131 (display-list): Returns list of currently active displays.
1132 => Implemented.
1133
1134 (selected-display): Returns the display object of the selected frame.
1135 => Not strictly necessary, but implemented anyway.
1136
1137 (frame-display FRAME): Returns the display object of FRAME.
1138 => Implemented.
1139
1140 (display-frames DISPLAY): Returns a list of frames on DISPLAY.
1141 => Already implemented, see frames-on-display-list.
1142
1143 (display-type DISPLAY): Returns the type of DISPLAY, as a
1144 symbol. (See `framep'.)
1145 => Implemented as display-live-p.
1146
1147 (display-device DISPLAY): Returns the name of the device that
1148 DISPLAY uses, as a string. (E.g: "/dev/pts/16", or
1149 ":0.0")
1150 => Implemented as display-name.
1151
1152 etc.
1153
1154 See next issue why this is necessary.
1155
1156 (Update: The consensus on emacs-devel seems to be to do this via
1157 integer identifiers. That's fine by me.)
1158
1159 (Done.)
1160
1161 -- The following needs to be supported:
1162
1163 $ emacsclient -t
1164 C-z
1165 $ emacsclient -t
1166 (This fails now.)
1167
1168 The cleanest way to solve this is to allow multiple displays on the
1169 same terminal device; each new emacsclient process should create
1170 its own display. As displays are currently identified by their
1171 device names, this is not possible until struct display becomes
1172 accessible as a Lisp-level object.
1173
1174 (Done.)
1175
1176 -- Miles Bader suggests that C-x C-c on an emacsclient frame should
1177 only close the frame, not exit the entire Emacs session. Update:
1178 see above for a function that does this. Maybe this should be the
1179 new default?
1180
1181 (Done. This is the new default. No complaints so far.)
1182
1183 -- Clean up the frame-local variable system. I think it's ugly and
1184 error-prone. But maybe I just haven't yet fully understood it.
1185
1186 (Nothing to do. It doesn't seem ugly any more. It's rather clever.)
1187
1188 -- Support multiple character locales. A version of
1189 `set-locale-environment' needs to be written for setting up
1190 display-local settings on ttys. I think calling
1191 set-display-table-and-terminal-coding-system and
1192 set-keyboard-coding-system would be enough. The language
1193 environment itself should remain a global setting.
1194
1195 (Done, by an ugly hack.)
1196
1197 -- The terminal customization files in term/*.el tend to change global
1198 parameters, which may confuse Emacs with multiple displays. Change
1199 them to tweak only frame-local settings, if possible. (They tend
1200 to call define-key to set function key sequences a lot.)
1201
1202 (Done, by making `function-key-map' terminal-local (i.e., part of
1203 struct kboard). This has probably covered all the remaining problems.)
1204
1205 -- Make `function-key-map' and `key-translation-map' terminal-local.
1206
1207 (Done.)
1208
1209 -- Implement `terminal-local-value' and `set-terminal-local-value' to
1210 allow deterministic access to terminal local bindings. The
1211 encode-kb package can not set up `key-translation-map' without
1212 these. The terminal-local bindings seem to be independent of what
1213 frame is selected.
1214
1215 (Done.)
1216
1217 ;;; arch-tag: 8da1619e-2e79-41a8-9ac9-a0485daad17d
1218