Re: Async commands in M-x compile

[Antoine Levitt]

Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> writes:

> Antoine Levitt <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Antoine Levitt <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> Ken Raeburn <address@hidden> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 29, 2010, at 18:43, Antoine Levitt wrote:
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Can someone explain to me why compile doesn't support asynchroneous
>>>>>> commands, and especially why it silently fails instead of displaying an
>>>>>> error message? I don't understand the mechanism involved here.
>>>>>
>>>>> The program run -- the shell -- exits (after having started some other
>>>>> program in background).  The compilation command has finished, and
>>>>> exited with an exit status that indicates success.  So, you're done.
>>>>> I could argue that it "succeeded", though apparently not at doing
>>>>> whatever it is that you think it should do.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, I would completely agree with that, except it _doesn't_ start the
>>>> program. Try running "xclock &"
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> As a test, try M-x compile with "echo test > ~/test &" or "xclock &".
>>>>>
>>>>> Why would you need something like that?  Compilation mode already lets
>>>>> you continue doing stuff in Emacs while the compilation runs.  And you
>>>>> can use something like "make -j" to run multiple tasks in parallel,
>>>>> without losing track of the exit statuses of subprocesses, like you
>>>>> would with "&".
>>>>>
>>>>> If you're not actually trying to do compilation, but just run some
>>>>> task in background without monitoring its progress or parsing error
>>>>> messages after failure, there's shell-mode, or you can give
>>>>> shell-command (M-!) a command ending with "&".
>>>>
>>>> Well, to be fair, I'm actually using compilation for another purpose
>>>> than what it was built for. I want to perform the action "compile latex,
>>>> if there is already a viewer, bring it to the front, if not, run one",
>>>> ie,
>>>>
>>>> rubber -d main && (wmctrl -a main.pdf || gnome-open main.pdf &)
>>>
>>> Have you tried AUCTeX?  It should be able to do this by default ...
>>> Alternatively, you can use the infrastructure in tex.el to accomplish
>>> what you want.
>>
>> I used to use AUCTeX, but there is a number of things it doesn't do (at
>> least, not without extensive coding, which I'm not prepared to
>> do). 
>
> Ask the AUCTeX list, using your preferred command should be one or two
> lines of code, or just customization.

Yes, except I'd have to adjust the output to check for errors in a
format auctex expects, etc. I'm very happy with compilation, thank you
very much. Using auctex would be of no benefit here.

>
>> Rubber checks for dependencies (including \input and
>> \includegraphics), runs bibtex, and runs the right amount of times, all
>> in one run. It also produces clean error output, which is something that
>> has bugged me with AUCTeX. It's true that AUCTeX is able to run viewers
>> etc, but I'm looking for a one-command solution, which I achieved with
>> this shell line.
>
> Then just run that command using one of the methods that were shown in
> this thread.