[Rd] where to send patches to R source code

[Göran Broström]

Dear Frederik,

I can confirm that especially the first issue on your list (resizing the 
terminal) has "bothered me" badly for some time now: I'm on Ubuntu 
(usually).

Göran Broström


On 2016-05-13 00:23, frederik at ofb.net wrote:
> Hi Peter, Martin, and others,
>
> Thanks for your replies.
>
> - The bugs apply to all systems that use GNU Readline, not just Linux
>    or Arch Linux.
>
> - Readline version 6.3 changed the signal handling so that SIGWINCH is
>    no longer handled automatically by the library. This means it's not
>    currently possible for people using R on e.g. Linux to resize the
>    terminal, or at least when they do so they have to make sure that
>    all their commands fit in one line and don't wrap.
>
> - There is also a long-standing bug in Readline where the callback
>    interface didn't properly clear the line on SIGINT (^C). This means
>    that "exiting" reverse-incremental-search with ^C would give an
>    apparently empty prompt which still had some pending input, so if
>    you hit ^C-Return then an unintended command would get executed.
>
> If they're not "bothering all that many people", then perhaps it's
> because everyone uses Windows or Mac OS X or RStudio. For me these are
> pretty significant bugs. The second one causes unintended code to be
> executed. Random code could delete files, for example, or worse. The
> first one bites me every time I want to change the size of a window,
> which is pretty often.
>
> I tried to get Readline maintainer Chet Ramey to fix these on the
> Readline side, but he disagreed with my proposal:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-readline/2016-04/threads.html
>
> I'm glad that my message here at least was seen and I hope that
> someone who uses the R command line on Linux will have time to verify
> that the patches work correctly. They are basically Chet-approved
> workarounds for bugs/changes in Readline, not very complicated.
>
> Do either of you know a Linux R person you could ping to get these
> patches checked out? I'm not overly frustrated, and I'm not in a major
> hurry, but from what we've observed it seems like waiting for someone
> concerned to come along and finally read Bugzilla or the R-Devel
> archives is not going to result in a very dense Poisson process...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Frederick Eaton
>
> On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 03:42:59PM +0200, peter dalgaard wrote:
>>
>>> On 12 May 2016, at 10:03 , Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>>>   <frederik at ofb.net>
>>>>>>>>     on Wed, 11 May 2016 23:00:20 -0700 writes:
>>>
>>>> Dear R Developers,
>>>> I wrote to this list a week ago with some patches that fix bugs in R's
>>>> GNU Readline interface, but I haven't had a reply. I'm not in a hurry
>>>> but I'd like to make sure that my message is getting read by the right
>>>> people. Should I be sending my patches somewhere else?
>>>
>>> Thank you Frederick for your reports and patches.
>>> You did send them to the correct place, https://bugs.r-project.org/
>>>
>>> Sometimes (as here) a combination of circumstances do lead to
>>> nobody picking them up quickly.
>>> In this case,
>>>
>>> - probably none of R-core use or even have easy access to Arch Linux
>>>   so we cannot easily veryify that there is a bug at all
>>>   nor -consequently- veryify that your patch does fix the bug.
>>
>> Actually, the bugs look like they should apply fairly generally, just maybe not bothering all that many people. But there could be portability issues with the fixes, so I suspect some of us were waiting for "a readline expert" to check them out.
>>
>> -pd
>>
>> BTW: Anyone with a fix for the stuck-at-eol issue? (aaa<right>bbb<left>ccc)
>>
>>>
>>> - no other user has confirmed the bug on his/her platform, so
>>>   there did not seem a huge demand...
>>>
>>> - Accidentally many in R core may be busy with other bugs, teaching, .....
>>>   and just lack the extra resources to delve into these problems
>>>   at the current moment.
>>>
>>> Hence, there was not even an 'Acknowledged' change to your
>>> reports--indeed as nobody had been able to see there is a problem
>>> existing outside of your personal computer.
>>>
>>> I agree that this must seem a bit frustrating to you.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>> --
>> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
>> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
>> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
>> Phone: (+45)38153501
>> Office: A 4.23
>> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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