[PATCH 2/2] test: use emacsclient(1) for Emacs tests

[Dmitry Kurochkin]

On Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:49:37 -0400, Austin Clements <amdragon at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Quoth Dmitry Kurochkin on Jun 28 at  5:03 am:
> > > >  The only way I know to
> > > > reliably kill a child process is to open a pipe to it and have it exit
> > > > on its own when it reads EOF.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to
> > > > do this with an emacs daemon (it appears daemon mode aggressively
> > > > cleans up things like pipes), but here's a different approach:
> > > > 
> > > >     coproc emacs --batch --eval "(while t (eval (read)))"
> > > >     EMACSFD=${COPROC[1]}
> > > >     trap "echo '(kill-emacs)' >&$EMACSFD" EXIT
> > > > 
> > > >     echo '(message "Hi")' >&$EMACSFD
> > > >     # ...
> > > > 
> > > > This is, basically, a poor man's emacs server, but the coprocess pipe
> > > > binds it tightly to the shell.  If the shell exits for *any* reason,
> > > > the pipe will be closed by the kernel, emacs will read an EOF, and
> > > > exit.
> > > 
> > > I like this idea.
> > > 
> > > >  The trap is there just to cleanly shut down in case of a normal
> > > > exit [1].
> > > 
> > > For normal exit we should just put this into test_done.  Otherwise it is
> > > not a normal exit and we do not care about Emacs error message.  No?
> > > 
> > > >  This also has the advantage that read-from-minibuffer still
> > > > works:
> > > > 
> > > >     echo '(message (read-from-minibuffer ""))' >&$EMACSFD
> > > >     echo 'Test' >&$EMACSFD
> > > > 
> > > > Thoughts?
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > I like it and I will implement it.  Thanks for the idea.
> > > 
> > 
> > While implementing the idea, I stumbled upon a problem: we need to know
> > when Emacs finished what we echoed or failed with an error.  At the
> > moment tests fail because they check for OUTPUT before Emacs creates it.
> > 
> > We can tell Emacs to print some special marker and wait for it.  But
> > there may be exceptions and errors which may make it difficult.  I did
> > not found a good solution yet.  Would love to hear your thoughts :)
> 
> Oof, yes, of course.  How about making the one-line poor man's emacs
> server slightly less poor?  Use a FIFO to communicate completion.
> Something like,
> 
> EMACSDONE=$TEST_DIRECTORY/emacsdone
> mkfifo $EMACSDONE
> coproc emacs --batch --eval '(while t (eval (read)) (write-region "\n" nil "'$EMACSDONE'" t 0))'
> EMACSFD=${COPROC[1]}
> 
> test_emacs() {
>     echo "$1" >&$EMACSFD
>     read <$EMACSDONE
> }
> 
> test_emacs '(sleep-for 2)'
> test_emacs '(message "Hi")'
> 
> echo '(kill-emacs)' >&$EMACSFD

I am sure that would work, but I do not like the complexity.  How about
getting back to standard emacsclient and running a watchdog in the
emacs?  Like:

(defun orphan-watchdog (pid)
  "Periodically check that the process with id PID is still
running, quit if it terminated."
  (if (not (process-attributes pid))
      (kill-emacs)
    (run-at-time "1 min" nil orphan-watchdog pid)))

This function (or my other changes) do not work (by yet unknown reason
:)), but you get the idea.

Regards,
  Dmitry