xterm/x11 strategy failing due to xterm which parses arguments badly argument parsing

[simlei]

Hi tpope,

I encountered today a confusing behavior of the x11 dispatch strategy. The upside is, it's rather not the fault of vim-dispatch. The bad news is, this is the xterm delivered by default to my Ubuntu 20.04 (yeah I need to upgrade ^_^).

The rundown:

I'm configuring dispatch like this, so that spawn chooses X11 as strategy.

let g:dispatch_terminal_exec="xterm"
let g:dispatch_no_tmux_spawn=1
let g:dispatch_no_job_spawn=1
let g:dispatch_no_terminal_spawn=1
let g:dispatch_no_gnuscreen_spawn=1

I do :Spawn env.

Nothing happens but an :echo telling me the process was spawned.

I trace down this behavior; I'm arriving at vim-dispatch/autoload/dispatch/x11.vim / function! dispatch#x11#spawn. It has a system(...) call at the end. I inspect the argument to that system call. It is:

xterm /bin/bash -c 'printf '\''\033]1;%s\007\033]2;%s\007'\'' newvim '\''/home/snuc/sandbox/vimrefactor/layer-simlei-base/vim-bin/newvim -c '\''\'\'''\''Messages'\''\'\'''\'''\''; echo $$ > /tmp/nvim.snuc/k2Rzj2/2.pid; sync; perl -e "select(undef,undef,undef,0.1)" 2>/dev/null; /home/snuc/sandbox/vimrefactor/layer-simlei-base/vim-bin/newvim -c '\''Messages'\''; test $? = 0 -o $? = 130 || (printf '\''^[[1m--- Press ENTER to continue ---^[[0m\n'\''; exec head -1); touch /tmp/nvim.snuc/k2Rzj2/2.complete' &

I run this command manually in a terminal. It's output is:

snuc@snuc-NUC8i7BEH:~$ xterm: ambiguous option "-cr" vs "-cc"
xterm: bad command line option "/bin/bash"

usage:  xterm [-/+132] [-C] [-Sccn] [-T string] [-/+ah] [-/+ai] [-/+aw]
    [-b number] [-baudrate rate] [-/+bc] [-bcf milliseconds]
    [-bcn milliseconds] [-bd color] [-/+bdc] [-bg color] [-bw number] [-/+cb]
    [-cc classrange] [-/+cjk_width] [-class string] [-/+cm] [-/+cn] [-cr color]
    [-/+cu] [-/+dc] [-display displayname] [-e command args ...] [-fa pattern]
    [-fb fontname] [-/+fbb] [-/+fbx] [-fd pattern] [-fg color] [-fi fontname]
    [-fn fontname] [-fs size] [-/+fullscreen] [-fw fontname] [-fwb fontname]
    [-fx fontname] [%geom] [#geom] [-geometry geom] [-help] [-/+hm] [-/+hold]
    [-iconic] [-/+ie] [-/+im] [-into windowId] [-/+itc] [-/+j] [-/+k8]
    [-kt keyboardtype] [-/+l] [-/+lc] [-lcc path] [-leftbar] [-lf filename]
    [-/+ls] [-/+maximized] [-/+mb] [-mc milliseconds] [-/+mesg] [-/+mk_width]
    [-ms color] [-n string] [-name string] [-nb number] [-/+nul] [-/+pc]
    [-/+pob] [-report-charclass] [-report-colors] [-report-fonts]
    [-report-icons] [-report-xres] [-rightbar] [-/+rv] [-/+rvc] [-/+rw] [-/+s]
    [-/+samename] [-/+sb] [-selbg color] [-selfg color] [-/+sf] [-sh number]
    [-/+si] [-/+sk] [-sl number] [-/+sm] [-/+sp] [-/+t] [-ti termid]
    [-title string] [-tm string] [-tn name] [-/+u8] [-/+uc] [-/+ulc] [-/+ulit]
    [-/+ut] [-/+vb] [-version] [-/+wc] [-/+wf] [-xrm resourcestring]
    [-ziconbeep percent]

and it's not terminating by itself, i.e. I have to <C-c> to get to my prompt. weird.

XTerm version:

snuc@snuc-NUC8i7BEH:~$ xterm -v
XTerm(353)

xterm is already the newest version (353-1ubuntu1.20.04.2).

I inspect the xterm man page. It says, it inspects /etc/shells to see whether one leading non-option argument is in it. In this case, it should find /bin/bash, stop trying to read options and pass the following arguments to it. However, that's not what it does according to it's output; it seems to try to match the -c to it's list of option flags.

A shame :( Just want to report this. I'm working around this myself now by writing the argument to the system(...) call to a temporary executable file and telling xterm to run that. Let me know if you're interested in a pull request of that workaround.

Cheers, a fan.

[simlei]

Here is what I've done and what now works for me: https://github.com/simlei/vim-dispatch/commit/c580099a4cadd839dac71ba0056207c46a08fc49

[tpope]

From the :help:

X11 ~

Uses g:dispatch_terminal_exec, "$TERMINAL -e", or "xterm -e". 

The default is already xterm -e. All you're doing by setting g:dispatch_terminal_exec is removing the -e, which unsurprisingly breaks everything.