External editor, not writing to temporary file

[dantleech]

Version: 3.2.0

Steps to reproduce

Invoke the external editor on a text area

Expected behaviour

Writes contents of text area to temporary file, opens external editor.

Actual behaviour

Temporary file does not exist, external editor opened with a new file.

---

I debugged this and in gboolean util_create_tmp_file the correct number of bytes are being returned from write - no error is raised but the file does not exist at the path and the newly opened editor reports that it is editing a "new file".

[fanglingsu]

@dantleech Hm, do you use systemd - might be the tmp file is not created direct in /tmp but in private systemd tmp directory. Can you please provide some information about you system helping to near down the issue?

[dantleech]

Hmm it seems to work with gvim but not through a terminal:

set editor-command=gvim -f %s

but:

set editor-command=gnome-terminal -- "vim %s"

or

set editor-command=xfce4-terminal -e "vim %s"

Causes the reported problem.

(I'm using neovim on another laptop, and couldn't get any of the GTK clients working, so wanted to use the console version, and that's why I encountered this issue).

[fanglingsu]

@dantleech set editor-command=st -t scratchpad -g 80x20+40+60 -e vim %s sorks for me. I do not have any other terminal. In the past following worked for me with urxvt too set editor-command=urxvt -title scratchpad -geometry 80x20+40+60 -e vim %s. I think you should remove the quotes around the vim %s.

[dantleech]

Yeah, very odd. I tried with the suckless terminal (st?) and it worked fine, but neither gnome-terminal nor xfce4-terminal work:

set editor-command=xfce4-terminal --initial-title scratchpad --command=vim %s

xfce4-terminal: Unknown option "/tmp/daniel/vimb-6SISNZ"

Using quotes around vim %s causes the editor to be opened, but the file is empty as originally reported.

Will update if I find a solution

[fanglingsu]

@dantleech I assume that the issue is related to https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=434863. The xfce termina forks itselft at startup.

[dantleech]

Sounds exactly like my issue - I'll close this ticket then, as guess theres nothing we should do about here/ Thanks for investigating :)