GNU bug report logs - #20538
24.4; Attempt to delete a surrogate minibuffer frame

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From: martin rudalics <rudalics <at> gmx.at>
To: Roland Winkler <winkler <at> gnu.org>, 20538 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#20538: 24.4; Attempt to delete a surrogate minibuffer frame
Date: Sun, 10 May 2015 14:30:28 +0200

> I do not know how I got into this (sorry, I do not have a recipe to
> reproduce this either).  I have a frame I want to delete by running
> delete-frame.  Yet this only gives me the error message
>
>    "Attempt to delete a surrogate minibuffer frame"
>
> and delete-frame refuses to do its job.  What does this mean?  If
> nothing else, Emacs could do a better job explaining to the user
> what it believes is going on and how the user can possibly resolve
> this.
>
> Possibly a relevant detail: I like to run Ediff sessions with one
> split frame showing both buffers I need to compare.  Yet Ediff
> sometimes comes up with its own ideas about resources it likes to
> use, grabbing another frame to show each buffer in a separate frame.
> If I remember correctly this happened here, too, that is, maybe
> Emacs believes that the frame I want to delete was/is part of the
> Ediff session.

It probably happens because ediff (by default) display the "control
panel" in a frame without minibuffer and Emacs doesn't allow to make
such a frame the last remaining one.

I use

(custom-set-variables
 '(ediff-window-setup-function (quote ediff-setup-windows-plain)))

which avoids that the control panel appears on a separate frame.

martin

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