Re: compiling remote rst files

[Michael Albinus]

Hans Halvorson <address@hidden> writes:

> Michael,

Hello Hans,

> I have pasted in below the definition of the "rst-compile" in rst.el.
> The problem is with the call to "rst-compile-find-conf" in the first
> let clause.  This function tries to search for a file called
> "docutils.conf" in all directories above the directory of the current
> buffer.  I do not know if that function is strictly incompatible with
> Tramp, or whether it just takes a very long time to search on some
> remote hosts.  But I have waited for up to two minutes after calling
> rst-compile before pressing C-g to cancel.

I've modified the code slightly:

  (let ((file-name "docutils.conf")
        (buffer-file "/ssh:localhost:~/.emacs"))
    ;; Move up in the dir hierarchy till we find a change log file.
    (let ((dir (file-name-directory buffer-file)))
      (while (and (or (not (string= "/" dir)) (setq dir nil) nil)
                  (not (file-exists-p (concat dir file-name))))
        (message dir)
        ;; Move up to the parent dir and try again.
        (setq dir (expand-file-name (file-name-directory
                                     (directory-file-name
                                     (file-name-directory dir))))) )
      (or (and dir (concat dir file-name)) nil)
    ))

If you evaluate the code, you'll see something like this in *Messages*:

Mark set
/ssh:address@hidden:~/
/ssh:address@hidden:/home/albinus/
/ssh:address@hidden:/home/
/ssh:address@hidden:/ [340 times]
Quit

The point is that the iteration goes via upper directories, and an
upper directory is computed as

(file-name-directory
 (directory-file-name
  (file-name-directory dir)))

That is correct, but for "/ssh:address@hidden:/" the upper directory
is "/ssh:address@hidden:/" again. The stop condition (string= "/" dir)
does not match in case of remote files.

> It is my opinion that the writers of rst.el should remove that call to
> rst-compile-find-conf; it is far too expensive an operation in any
> case.  But until they do that, should Tramp try to disable the search?

I fear, Tramp cannot solve the problem; rst.el must take remote files
into account.

> For now, I just use "compile" directly with Tramp.  Remote compilation
> is not quite working: it does not terminate properly -- Emacs is not
> receiving the signal that the compilation is finished.

Thanks for reporting; I've fixed it in Tramp CVS.

> Best wishes,
> Hans

Best regards, Michael.