[ESS-bugs] ess won't load in emacs-29.3 on Fedora 39

[Jon Baron]

After upgrading from Fedora 38 to 39, ess stopped working. Most
recently I put all the .el and .elc files in .emacs.d/lisp/ (which
contains other things that work fine). If I then put the following
single line in my .emacs file, I get an error:

(require 'ess-r-mode)

The first thing I see is

Wrong type argument: stringp, nil

and a recommendation to try emacs --debug-init

When I ran emacs emacs --debug-init I got the following:

################# begin quote
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument stringp nil)
  file-directory-p(nil)
  byte-code("\302\303\304\305\306\307\310\311\310\312&\11\210\302\313\304\314\306\303\315\316&\7\210\302\317\304\320\306\303\315\316&\7\210\302\321\304\322\306\303\315\316&\7\210\302\323\304\324..." [ess-lisp-directory ess-etc-directory custom-declare-group ess nil "ESS: Emacs Speaks Statistics." :group languages :link (info-link "(ESS)") (url-link "https://ess.r-project.org/") ess-edit "ESS: editing behavior, including comments/indentat..." :prefix "ess-" ess-proc "ESS: process control." ess-command "ESS: Commands for various things." ess-help "ESS: help functions." ess-hooks "ESS: hooks for customization." ess-S "ESS: S Languages." ess-SPLUS "ESS: S-PLUS Dialect of S." ess-R "ESS: R Dialect of S." ess-Julia "ESS: Julia." "julia-" ess-sas "ESS: SAS." ess-roxy "Mode for editing in-code Roxygen documentation." convenience ess-extras tools "Extra utilities for ESS." ess-faces "Faces and face options for ESS modes." faces custom-declare-variable funcall function #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode -0xc44d3eb06380513>) "Directory containing ess-site.el(c) and other ESS ..." :type directory ...] 14)
  require(ess-custom)
  byte-code("\300\301!\210\300\302!\210\300\303!\210\300\304!\207" [require cl-lib comint project ess-custom] 2)
  require(ess-utils)
  byte-code("\300\301!\210\300\302!\210\300\303!\207" [require ess-utils cl-generic lisp-mnt] 2)
  require(ess)
  byte-code("\300\301!\210\300\302!\210\303\304\305\306\307DD\310\311\312\313\314&\7\207" [require ess ess-inf custom-declare-variable ess-mode-hook funcall function #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode 0x19800016fe914>) "Hook for customizing ESS each time it is entered." :group ess-hooks :type hook] 8)
  require(ess-mode)
  byte-code("\301\302!\210\301\303!\210\301\304!\210\301\305!\210\301\306!\210\301\307!\210\301\310!\210\301\311!\210\301\312!\210\301\313!\210\301\314!\210\10\315Y\2036\0..." [emacs-major-version require cl-lib compile ess-mode ess-help ess-s-lang ess-roxy ess-r-completion ess-r-syntax ess-r-package ess-trns ess-r-xref 26 ess-r-flymake custom-declare-variable ess-r-mode-hook funcall function #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode 0x19800016fe914>) "Hook run when entering `ess-r-mode'." :options (electric-layout-local-mode) :type hook :group ess-R] 10)
  require(ess-r-mode)
  load-with-code-conversion("/home/baron/.emacs" "/home/baron/.emacs" t t)
  load("~/.emacs" noerror nomessage)
  startup--load-user-init-file(#f(compiled-function () #<bytecode -0x61ca1a49794ffd8>) #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode -0x1f3c61addc0b39f5>) t)
  command-line()
  normal-top-level()
######################## end quote

I could not submit this through emacs, as you suggest, because,
apparently, nothing got loaded. I don't know what all this means, but
one thing suggests that I am missing some package. But, as I said, I
did install all of them in the latest version of emacs-ess.

I have been trying to use "emacs -f shell" as a substitute, but it
does tab compleion from bash, not from R. That is the main thing I
miss. It does allow me to paste commands from emacs.

Jon
-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron