emacs unable to start tern on win 7

[expez]

Typing slows to a crawl as emacs expends resources trying to start tern. Eventually this is shown:

Error running timer: (file-error "make client process failed" "connection refused" :name "127.0.0.1" :buffer #<killed buffer> :host "127.0.0.1" :service 54006 :nowait nil)

How can I possibly debug this? Does the vague error message indicate that tern was successfully started, but the client is unable to connect?

[expez]

If I start the server manually with --persistent and --verbose everything seems to work just fine.

[marijnh]

Spawning processes cross-platform seems to be a major challenge. Do you have any running node processes when this runs? When you look at your tern-command variable, does it point at the correct file, and does running that command from a shell work?

[expez]

tern-command is ("node" "tern"). With no other running node processes.

I've tried hitting C-h v a few times to see if tern-command changes, but it does not.

[marijnh]

That's the fallback you get when tern.el can't find the Tern binary. Either set tern-command yourself in your .emacs (to hold ("node" "c:/path/to/actual/tern/bin/tern")), or figure out why the script isn't finding Tern relative to its own path (did you copy it somewhere? did you properly install Tern's JavaScript module?)

[expez]

right, I had initially set it to point to another path, but since I have tern on path that probably doesn't matter? In any event, I've never been able to do C-h v <tern-command> and see a filename included.

[marijnh]

This is the code that initializes that variable. It is set only once, at startup, so repeatedly querying it won't reveal anything new. You could try debugging why (file-exists bin-file) is returning false.

[expez]

When you look at your tern-command variable, does it point at the correct file,

Misunderstood you here and thought it might get updated with arguments for tern i.e. the file in use atm. I'll take a look at bin-file when I'm back at work tomorrow. Thanks!

[expez]

bin-file: /path/to/.emacs.d/elpa/bin/tern where nothing is to be found.

The cause of the problem is this