Errors thrown by activate.fish

[vbabiy]

I'm getting a bunch of errors using the activate script for Fish (many thanks for supporting this minority shell!).

wilfred@Tenor ~/py-envs> . app-engine/bin/activate.fish 
fish: Unknown command “tempfile”
/home/wilfred/py-envs/app-engine/bin/activate.fish (line 1): tempfile
                                                             ^
in command substitution
    called on line 46 of file “/home/wilfred/py-envs/app-engine/bin/activate.fish”,

in . (source) call of file “/home/wilfred/py-envs/app-engine/bin/activate.fish”,
    called on standard input,

fish: Expected redirection specification, got token of type “$oldpromptfile”
/home/wilfred/py-envs/app-engine/bin/activate.fish (line 49):         echo "function _old_fish_prompt" >> $oldpromptfile
                                                                                                          ^
in . (source) call of file “/home/wilfred/py-envs/app-engine/bin/activate.fish”,
    called on standard input,

wilfred@Tenor ~/py-envs> fish --version
fish, version 1.23.1
wilfred@Tenor ~/py-envs> virtualenv --version
1.5.1

Things still seem to work as expected, but the prompt doesn't change.

Cheers.

---

• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/ianb/virtualenv/issue/69
• Originally Reported By:
• Originally Created At: 2010-10-29 13:10:07

[vbabiy]

Ah. My bad. The script's call to "tempfile" fails
(http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/tempfile.1.html), so it
doesn't generate the temporary file for the old prompt, and everything falls
apart from there.

I'll change this to something more standard. It looks like mktemp is the
favoured way of doing the same thing?

If you swap that line in activate.fish (line 49), from:

set -l oldpromptfile (tempfile)

to:

set -l oldpromptfile (mktemp)

does it start working for you?

---

Original Comment By: Christopher Nilsson

[vbabiy]

I've pushed some updates to my fork, over at:
http://bitbucket.org/otherchirps/virtualenv .

It should now use mktemp, instead of tempfile. Hopefully that's more
widespread. Also, should mktemp be unavailable, it will fallback to a simple
prompt change. (There'll still be an error, complaining about mktemp not being
found, but at least it won't just bomb out without letting you know the
virtual env vars are "in play".)

From what I can tell, it seems to fix the problem.

Please review. If all is well, I'll send a pull request.

---

Original Comment By: Christopher Nilsson

[vbabiy]

Works like a charm.

---

Original Comment By: Wilfred

[vbabiy]

On OSX, mktime doesn't work like on linux (not the same arguments). The only
portable way is to use python: python -c 'import tempfile;print(tempfile.mkstemp()[1])'

---

Original Comment By: chs

[vbabiy]

Ah...

I don’t have a Mac available, so perhaps someone else can confirm this for me.
Judging by the docs it looks that on Mac OS X (and in turn, some of the
BSDs), mktemp requires a mandatory argument. Either you have to supply a
full filename template, or use the -t flag, which will append the given
filename pattern to the $TMPDIR. eg. "mktemp -t foo.XXX" gives
"/tmp/foo.ulG".

For linux & friends using the GNU Coreutils implementation (which is what
I tested under), mktemp doesn’t require any arguments, since it will happily
assume an implicit -t with a default value.

Spinning up a python interpreter, as suggested, would work well. However, it’s
probably lighter to simply supply the optional arguments (eg. “mktemp -t tmp.oldpromptcontents.XXXX”, or something), since this should work across all
these platforms as well. I’ve uploaded this change to my fork, as before. Let
me know if it works for you or not.

Of course, if my reading of this is wrong, calling on python will probably be
the best way to go. Definitely portable. And since we’re trying to activate a
virtualenv, it’s a safe bet python is available. :)

/ManPages/man1/mktemp.1.html

invocation.html#mktemp-invocation

---

Original Comment By: Christopher Nilsson

[KangOl]

it work with mktemp -t tmp.oldpromptcontents.XXXX

[maxcountryman]

+1 would be great to see this patched

[carljm]

Fixed in 9be1f43 - thanks @dsc.

[dsc]

Sorry I didn't reply earlier -- I couldn't get to the bottom of the reason for the changes to ez_setup.py and then it fell off my plate. Great to see it merged into master!

[skeet70]

I'm still having a problem with this, heres what I get when running . bin/activate.fish with both fish 1.23.1 and beta r2 fishfish and virtualenv 1.8.2:

fish: Could not locate end of block. The 'end' command is missing, misspelled or a ';' is missing.
/private/tmp/.psub.99273.11049 (line 1): function _old_fish_prompt
                                         ^
in . (source) call of file '/private/tmp/.psub.99273.11049',
    called on line 50 of file '/env/research_experiment/django_apache/bin/activate.fish',

in . (source) call of file '/env/research_experiment/django_apache/bin/activate.fish',
    called on standard input,


       function − function ‐ create a function

function ‐ create a function
   # snipped fish man page on function

.: Error while reading file '/private/tmp/.psub.99273.11049'
fish: Unknown command '_old_fish_prompt'
/env/research_experiment/django_apache/bin/activate.fish (line 57): _old_fish_prompt
                                                                    ^
in command substitution
    called on line 69 of file '/env/research_experiment/django_apache/bin/activate.fish',

in function 'fish_prompt',
    called on standard input,

in command substitution
    called on standard input,

Environment is successfully set up though, and prompt changes to a blue (env_name). Every command works but throws:

(django_apache)virtualenv --version
1.8.2
fish: Unknown command '_old_fish_prompt'
/env/research_experiment/django_apache/bin/activate.fish (line 57): _old_fish_prompt
                                                                    ^
in command substitution
    called on line 69 of file '/env/research_experiment/django_apache/bin/activate.fish',

in function 'fish_prompt',
    called on standard input,

in command substitution
    called on standard input,

Something I need to change, or a bug?

[gabriel4649]

I'm getting the same errors as skeet70

[sumeet]

confirmed, same error. i'm on snow leopard, virtualenv 1.8.2 and python 2.6.

[mcassiano]

Keeps throwing error below in every command.
Mountain Lion running virtualenv 1.9.1

.: Error encountered while sourcing file ' -- psub -Q -o hf --':
.: Value too large to be stored in data type
fish: Unknown command '_old_fish_prompt'
/Users/matheus/Desktop/work/env/bin/activate.fish (line 57): _old_fish_prompt
                                                                ^
in command substitution
    called on line 69 of file '/Users/matheus/Desktop/work/env/bin/activate.fish',

in function 'fish_prompt',
    called on standard input,

in command substitution
    called on standard input,

[gabriel4649]

For Fish users I would recommend to just move to Virtual Fish, it works really great. I never got this to work but Virtual Fish works flawlessly.

[mcassiano]

I'll check it out. Thanks :)