[ESS] Interactive SAS mode hangs

[Erin Jonaitis]

Dear Rodney et al,

I'm still chasing down a problem with a new ESS install -- namely, when I am in M-x SAS mode, running C-c C-p on something as simple as a data step hangs the system. Setting the debug flag to t and trying again unfortunately does not produce any informative errors. M-x ess-sas-interactive does run code properly, although it won't allow me to view the .log or .lst files as I work, the way I'm accustomed to doing. (That is, it doesn't open buffers automatically the way M-x SAS does, and if I open the relevant files in new buffers, I only see a static version of each, not a version that updates as I step through the code.)

The last time I wrote to you, a few weeks ago, the suggestion (echoed below) was that version incompatibility between ESS and Emacs might explain my problem (or at least be a thing to rule out). I passed this on to our tech support team and it spiraled into upgrading to a new version of Red Hat (7.0); we've now done that, and are on GNU Emacs 24.3.1 and ESS 15.03, which I think are both reasonably recent versions, respectively. However the hanging behavior is still there.

Do you have any advice on what I/we should try next?

Erin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erin Jonaitis" <jonaitis using fstrf-wi.org>
To: "ess-help" <ess-help using stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2015 10:20:06 AM
Subject: Re: Interactive SAS mode hangs

Thanks again, Rodney. That gives us two possible paths to try before trying to modify source code ourselves! I'll pass your suggestions about Emacs and ESS version compatibility on to our sysadmin.

Erin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sparapani, Rodney" <rsparapa using mcw.edu>
To: jonaitis using fstrf-wi.org
Cc: "ess-help" <ess-help using stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2015 8:25:18 AM
Subject: Re: Interactive SAS mode hangs

> I'm not sure what the distinction you're drawing (setup vs ESS itself) means for me in practice. What types
> of things should I be looking at in my setup to explore reasons for the failure of M-x SAS? What does M-x SAS
> depend on that ess-sas-interactive doesn't?
 
Well, if you know that ess-sas-interactive works, then there should be
nothing stopping M-x SAS from working.  But, now you would have to do
some debugging of the ESS elisp code to actually figure out what is
wrong.  Is it a bug in your setup?  Such as emacs 23.1 is buggy.  Or
is it a bug in ESS itself?  It's hard to say at this point.

> Also, a colleague drew my attention to the *Messages* buffer so I thought I'd try your first suggestion
> again (emacs -q, manually load ESS after setting a debug flag) and look there for error messages. I found one:
> QuitError during redisplay (void-function with-silent-modifications)

Probably due to emacs 23.1 not having this function.  You might be
able to grab the function from the emacs 24 source.  emacs 23.1 is
from 2009 and many of us have moved on to newer, less-buggy versions.
It might be better if you used an ESS version that was more concurrent 
with emacs 23.1 like ESS 12.09 from Sep. 2012.