Args out of range

[nomicode]

I installed magit today. I've not used it yet, not configured it.

I have a Makefile in Git directory that calls this:

emacs --batch -l config.el -f org-publish-all

For some reason, this fails with:

Args out of range: #("Git@" 0 4 (help-echo "Locally added file under the Git version control system")), 0, 7

Again, I'm not using magit for anything. It's not mentioned in config.el. All I've done is install with with MELPA.

Strangely enough, when I run that command from the CLI, it works fine!

Output of which emacsclient:

/usr/local/bin/emacsclient

This looks legit to me.

[nomicode]

Done a bit more debugging. I had these lines in my Makefile:

export GIT_WORK_TREE = $(BASEDIR)
export GIT_DIR = $(GIT_WORK_TREE)/.git

If I uncomment them, the command works fine.

Why is this? I'm not doing anything with Git. Is magit's existence on my load path causing it to somehow try to execute something when it finds those variables?

And why don't they work? They work for the Git commands that follow the Emacs one.

[tarsius]

Greping the Emacs source indicates that the error is causes by vc-mode-line. Calling Emacs with --debug-init might tell you more about it. So it appears it is not Magit but VC that is having problems. Try adding --eval "(setq vc-handled-backends nil)" as an early argument to Emacs in the Makefile. That might be enough to work around this issue.

I think that the problem is that vc does something that expects to be in the worktree while the default-directory is actually /path/to/.git/. By setting GIT_WORK_TREE that is fixed, so that's why it works in that case. By the way that wouldn't work for Magit, as it ignores that variable.

I would argue that having a Makefile in .git is a mistake in the first place. Move it into the working directory. And if you don't want to track it then add an entry to .gitignore.

[flajann2]

Adding:

(setq vc-handled-backends nil)

To .emacs fixed this long-annoying problem for me. Thanks.