Doesn't work when using SHELL=/bin/tcsh

[arp242]

This is, presumably, the same issue as with the fish shell: #12 , some people also reported problems with zsh as well...

IMHO, the proposed workaround is not a very good one. If I use set shell=/bin/sh in my vimrc, all my :!cmd filters now use /bin/sh instead of tcsh; so I lose the tcsh semantics I'm used to, including my aliases that I use in tcsh. I could set this manually before every vim-plug command (which is what I do now), but this is obviously rather awkward.

Can't vim-plug set the shell to /bin/sh when running shell commands (and re-set it to whatever it was) on completion? Or use some other method that doesn't require globally setting the shell in Vim (such as maybe system('/bin/sh -c cmd')...

Thanks :-)

[junegunn]

Thanks for the report. Could you test if the above patch fixes your problem?

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/fix-159/plug.vim

[arp242]

Thanks :-) I tried all the commands, and everything seems to work fine.

A related issue (minor) I noticed:

If I use :PlugSnapshot, it will create a script with #!/bin/bash; however, my system (FreeBSD) doesn't have a /bin/bash, as bash is installed to /usr/local/bin/bash...

As far as I can see, there's no bash-specific syntax being used? So #!/bin/sh would also suffice? Otherwise using #!/usr/bin/env bash is considered to be "better", since that uses PATH to lookup the bash executable...

[junegunn]

Good point, thanks!

[junegunn]

The fixes are now merged to master. Thanks.

[vhda]

I'd like to reopen this issue.

The implemented fix is not correct because shellredir is not updated to match the shell setting.
Looking at :help shellredir the following is described:

For Unix, if the 'shell' option is "csh", "tcsh" or "zsh" during initializations,
the default becomes ">&".  If the 'shell' option is "sh", "ksh" or "bash" the
default becomes ">%s 2>&1".

So, if vim is started in a tcsh the shell redirection used in system() calls will not work properly.
To overcome this, a temporary shellredir must be set as following:

set shellredir=>%s\ 2>&1

[junegunn]

@vhda I see, but does it make vim-plug fail? I tried with set shell=/bin/tcsh shellredir=>& and everything works just as expected. When do you get errors?

[vhda]

I detected the issue exactly because I was trying to call :PlugUpdate and :PlugUpgrade. Any of these commands will fail due to vim being unable to redirect the output of system() into a temporary file.
I don't understand why that fails to happen using the settings you described. Could I ask you to to try to call :PlugUpgrade from a vim started inside a tcsh?

[vhda]

@junegunn forgot one very important detail: I use dash in Debian. As such, when vim-plug sets shell to /bin/sh it will be in fact using /bin/dash. This POSIX compliant shell does not understand the >& redirection, which is a bashism.

[starcraftman]

@vhda I can't replicate either. Seems to work fine.

Don't think last detail matters. Ubuntu also has/bin/sh => /bin/dash. Issues would flood in if that was related.

To test, all I did was invoke tcsh then start vim & PlugUpdate. You are saying this procedure should fail?

Side Note: When you say you use dash, you mean as your terminal for daily commands right? I'm curious, why?

[vhda]

No, I use tcsh as my command shell. dash is only used as the default shell of the system.

I am also unable to replicate this in my Debian unstable at home, so I'll need to debug this further at work tomorrow. Will add more information as soon as I have any.

[arp242]

I've been using vim-plug with tcsh as my login shell since the issue was fixed in February; haven't experienced any problems with either :PlugUpgrade or :PlugUpdate.

I believe vim-plug tries to use Ruby, Python, or a VimScript fallback depending on which features are available. My Vim has both +ruby and +python, so perhaps this problem only occurs when using Python or the VimScript fallback?

[junegunn]

@vhda Well, it's strange, but anyway, the following patch will set shellredir as you initially suggested. Does it help?

https://gist.github.com/junegunn/3d8a435a660df20b164b

[vhda]

@junegunn your patch fixes the problem.

Debug information: my vim installation has +ruby, +python and -python3. My default shell is tcsh and /bin/sh points to dash (version 0.5.7-4+b1). Using :PlugUpgrade to understand that two temporary files are created:

1. One in vim-plug, line1789.
2. Another created automatically by vim's system() call.

The error I have is in the second temporary file and the error message is the following:

Error detected while processing function <SNR>5_upgrade..<SNR>5_system:
line    7:
E484: Can't open file /tmp/vOXZBJD/1

I still was not able to find any culprit other than shellredir.

[junegunn]

@vhda Okay, I was able to reproduce the error on OS X by

• Changing /bin/sh (which was actually bash) to dash
• and setting the default shell to /bin/tcsh

And confirmed that changing shellredir fixes the issue. The patch is merged to master. Thanks.

[vhda]

@junegunn finally! I was starting to believe I had something wrong on my system! :)
It's working perfectly for me now. Thanks a lot for the fix.