[ESS] ?':::' hangs

[Ross Boylan]

On Thu, 2013-12-05 at 11:35 -0800, Vitalie Spinu wrote:
>  >>> Ross Boylan on Thu, 5 Dec 2013 10:30:47 -0800 wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>  > Does help depend on some temporary file that might get cleaned up by
>  > routine system housekeeping?
> 
> ESS help is just a simple wrapper for R's help function. If you can run
> utils::help("foo") but C-c C-v doesn't work then it is indeed an ESS
> problem. Then please run .ess.help("foo") and report here what you
> see.
> 
>   Vitalie
Helped stopped working in a long-running session.  The failure occurred
while I was actively using the system.

utils::help("summary")
simply returns me to the prompt.  Narrowly, I can run it, but I think
something more is supposed to happen.

Likewise C-c C-v didn't show anything.

Tail of *Messages*
No documentation found;  [2 times]
No documentation for ‘quantiile’ in specified packages and libraries:
No documentation found;
History item: 1
No documentation found;
History item: 1
No documentation found;
Quit

For example, after utiils::help("summary") "History item: 1" appeared in the buffer.

Tail of *ESS*
ess-END-of-fun: S4=nil, beginning = 1989
ess-END-of-fun: found #1 : 2697
(ess-setq-vars-LOCAL): language=S, dialect=R, buf=nil, comint..echoes=t, comint..sender=comint-simple-send
(ess-help '*help[R](summary)*' start  ..
 |--> t [searching nil]
(ess-help: kill bogus buffer *help[R](summary)* ..
(ess-setq-vars-LOCAL): language=S, dialect=R, buf=nil, comint..echoes=t, comint..sender=comint-simple-send
(ess-help '*help[R](summary)*' start  ..
 |--> t [searching nil]
(ess-help: kill bogus buffer *help[R](summary)* ..
(ess-setq-vars-LOCAL): language=S, dialect=R, buf=nil, comint..echoes=t, comint..sender=comint-simple-send
(ess-help '*help[R](quantiile)*' start  ..
 |--> 70 [searching t]
(ess-help: kill bogus buffer *help[R](quantiile)* ..
(ess-setq-vars-LOCAL): language=S, dialect=R, buf=nil, comint..echoes=t, comint..sender=comint-simple-send
(ess-help '*help[R](quantile)*' start  ..
 |--> t [searching nil]
(ess-help: kill bogus buffer *help[R](quantile)* ..
(ess-setq-vars-LOCAL): language=S, dialect=R, buf=nil, comint..echoes=t, comint..sender=comint-simple-send
(ess-help '*help[R](quantile)*' start  ..
 |--> t [searching nil]
(ess-help: kill bogus buffer *help[R](quantile)* ..
(ess-get-help-topics-list R) ..(get-object-list R) .. using existing ess-sl-modtime-alist
 (length alist) : 20
 have re-read pos=1: -> length 0
 (ess-search-list ... ) after 'search()
', point-max=436
Processing RDS files ...
(ess-setq-vars-LOCAL): language=S, dialect=R, buf=nil, comint..echoes=t, comint..sender=comint-simple-send
(ess-help '*help[R](summary)*' start  ..
 |--> t [searching nil]
(ess-help: kill bogus buffer *help[R](summary)* ..