[slime-devel] Sometimes function arglists stop displaying

[Helmut Eller]

Peter Seibel <peter at javamonkey.com> writes:

> I've noticed this a few times: I'll be using SLIME and suddenly space
> no longer causes the function arglists to show up in the minibuffer.
> SPC is still bound to slime-space but it doesn't work in either Lisp
> source code buffers or REPL buffers. I certainly didn't do anything on
> purpose to turn it off. I just observed it in Allegro though since I
> switch impls a lot I'm not sure if that's the only place I've seen it.
> I'll try to look into it if I get a chance but I thought I post here
> in case anyone else knows anything about it.

In such situations it's a good idea check the *inferior-lisp*
buffer[*].  If a bug occurs in the reader or control thread, the
connection hangs.  Since these bugs cannot be debugged with the SLIME
debugger, Lisp creates a debugger in the *inferior-lisp* buffer.  I
notices some problem when I tried to interrupt a non-existing thread.
Usually you can continue from the debugger and the session continues
without much trouble.  We probably need a more robust approach to deal
with errors in the control thread.

Helmut.


[*] Add this to your .emacs, to popup the *inferior-lisp* buffer
automatically:

(add-hook 'inferior-lisp-mode-hook 
	  (defun my-inferior-lisp-mode-hook ()
            (add-to-list
             (make-local-variable 'comint-output-filter-functions)
             (lambda (string)
               (unless (get-buffer-window (current-buffer) t)
                 (display-buffer (current-buffer) t))
               (comint-postoutput-scroll-to-bottom string)))))