Subject: Re: bug#4137: 23.1.50; vc-dir waits instead of error message

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 23:17:54 -0500

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  > >> I tried doing vc-dir without having entered my passphrase to enable
  > >> subjobs of Emacs to contact savannah.  So CVS would have failed.
  > >> But vc-dir gave no sign of this.  It created the buffer in the initial
  > >> state, and never said or did anything more.

  > > I'm not sure I understand this bug report.  Was Emacs supposed to prompt
  > > for a password here?  (I think I've repressed how CVS worked with
  > > remote, password-protected repositories...)

I am sorry my scenario was not clear.

Normally, VC commands fail when I have not previously specified my ssh
passphrase so CVS can contact savannah.  Emacs does not know how
to promptfor the passphrase on their behalf.

So normally I specify the passphrase in advance with ssh-add.

That time I forgot to run ssh-add, so the basic vc commands should
have failed.

But vc-dir didn't report a failure.  Instead it created the buffer
with no failure report, and then the buffer was nonresponsive to
commands.

The bug is that vc-dir did not fail when it should have failed.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)