[ESS] error in process sentinel: Not enough arguments for format string

[Marius Hofert]

Hi,

As I reported on https://github.com/emacs-ess/ESS/issues/883 (last
post), I'm (still) affected by the randomly appearing error "error in
process sentinel: Not enough arguments for format string" and related
'freezing' of Emacs (which is especially popular when teaching in
front of 300 students :-) ). My workaround so far was to use M-x
flymake-mode to disable flymake which solved the problem.

Before disabling flymake mode completely (not sure if (setq
flymake-start-on-flymake-mode nil) would be correct...), I thought
I'll ask to a) express that the problem still exists and b) perhaps
learn how to properly tell ESS to avoid flymake mode or to deal with
the problem otherwise. After browsing a bit, I found ess-r-flymake on
https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/46556/error-in-process-sentinel-whenever-using-in-an-ess-r-buffer?noredirect=1&lq=1
but I'm not sure if that's the write place for modifications for
disabling flymake mode.

I'm using ESS 18.10.2 [Released git: d4cd65da6dbf] and GNU Emacs 26.3
on macOS (the problem appeared at least in 10.14 and 10.5). I don't
have a reproducible example. I did get the feeling though that chances
of triggering the error are slightly higher if I'm "fast", for
example, quickly switching to an R buffer and trying to make
modifications or quickly navigating through many lines of source code
and then modifying a line. It appears maybe 2 to 3 times a day when
I'm programming.

Thanks & cheers,
Marius