bug#66979: Wrong number of arguments with completion-at-point

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Stefan.

On Tue, Nov 07, 2023 at 15:13:53 -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >>     commit f931cebce76d911dfc61274e0a8c1de3627b9179
> >>     Author: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> >>     Date:   Wed Sep 20 15:51:17 2023 +0000

> >>     Insert symbol `debug' into two condition-case handlers

> >>     This fixes bug#65622.  Also correct a mismatch between a
> >>     function to which advice is added, and that from which it is
> >>     removed.

> >>     * lisp/emacs-lisp/macroexp.el (internal-macroexpand-for-load):
> >>     Add a `debug' to the condition-case handler for `error', so
> >>     that a useful backtrace will be produced on a macro expansion
> >>     error.

> >>     * lisp/progmodes/elisp-mode.el (elisp--local-variables): Add
> >>     `debug' to a condition-case handler, as above.  In the
> >>     advice-remove call, give the same function, macroexpand-1, as
> >>     in the corresponding advice-add call.

> >> Alan do you remember why you also added the `debug` to the
> >> condition-case in `elisp--local-variables`?
> >> The rest of the commit looks right to me.

> > I was trying to debug an error in eager macro expansion (i.e. macro
> > expansion in forms called directly by read), and that was the
> > condition-case that was suppressing the backtrace.

> Really?  I'd expect this case to go through the `condition-case` that's
> in `internal-macroexpand-for-load` but not the condition-case that's in
> `elisp--local-variables`.

> Any chance you can still reproduce the bug and get a backtrace showing
> how `elisp--local-variables` gets involved?

It's difficult, no I can't get the backtrace, it is being suppressed by
some condition-case somewhere.  But I do get the error message "Ignoring
macroexpansion error: (void-function edebug-after)".  That "Ignoring
macroexpansion error" comes from elisp--local-variables.

To get this, from a reasonably up to date master:
(i) git checkout 1d46bca1^.
(ii) make -j<whatever> bootstrap.
(iii) Follow the recipe in bug #65622, including (setq debug-on-error t).
(iv) Repeat the C-u C-M-x in the recipe several times, until it no longer
outputs a backtrace.

The message one now sees in the echo area is the "Ignoring macroexpansion
error:" one.

What has happened is that the advice macroexpand-advice in
elisp--local-variables has been applied to macroexpand-1, and due to the
typo there, never gets removed (now fixed with bug #65622).  This piece
of advice is what suppresses the backtrace.

> >> Macro expansion errors in there are perfectly normal since
> >> `elisp--local-variables` routinely passes incomplete code to
> >> macroexpand.  IOW most errors signal'd in there probably don't need to
> >> be debugged at all.
> > But when somebody has set debug-on-error to t, they _want_ those errors
> > signalled, surely?

> No, I have it set and don't want to be told that the internal completion
> machinery extracted broken code from the current buffer in its
> best-effort attempt to compute the set of surrounding lexical variables.

> In 99% of the cases, it is neither a bug in the code I'm editing nor in
> the macros.  The design of `elisp--local-variables` is such that it
> often builds syntactically invalid code to pass to the macro expander.

Which is anything but obvious from the (lack of) comments around that
condition case, and in the function in general.

But I think I added the debug to that condition-case handler before
spotting and correcting the typo in macroexpand[-1].  So it may well be
that that debug could be removed without great damage.

>         Stefan

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).