Errors running in terminal emacs

[Trepanated]

I'm running emacs 24.4 in Terminal.app on OS X 10.9 (Mavericks). I've run into a series of issues that seem to be related to calling functions not available in terminal mode, starting with this appearing in the Warnings buffer:

Symbol's function definition is void: tool-bar-mode

That's from line 52 of spacemacs/config.el. I changed it to the following which seems to resolve the issue:

(if (functionp 'tool-bar-mode) (tool-bar-mode 0))

Same error on line 56 with scroll-bar-mode, similar fix applied.

That gets me as far as fetching and installing packages, but then this appears:

Symbol's function definition is void: define-fringe-bitmap

That one seemed a bit more involved so I did not attempt a fix.

[syl20bnr]

Thank you @Trepanated for the report.

Those warnings are weird, it's like Emacs believes that your run in a graphical environment instead of inside a terminal.

Do you use emacs -nw to launch emacs in your terminal ? What build of emacs do you have (brew, macports or other) ?

[syl20bnr]

@Trepanated It works here in terminal.app (OS X 10.10) with emacs -nw and a brew build of Emacs 24.4.

[Trepanated]

Hi, yes that's strange. I'm using a homebrew build and just running "emacs", which is a link in /usr/local/bin that points to /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/24.4/bin/emacs. I just tried "emacs -nw" but don't notice any difference. Here are the last lines from the Messages buffer after startup:

(Spacemacs) Initializing spacemacs:vi-tilde-fringe...
vi-tilde-fringe-mode: Symbol's function definition is void: define-fringe-bitma
p
Error in post-command-hook (global-vi-tilde-fringe-mode-check-buffers): (void-f
unction define-fringe-bitmap)
ad-handle-definition: `tramp-read-passwd' got redefined
Helm completion enabled

[syl20bnr]

I have the same error for tramp since 24.4, not sure if it is related directly to spacemacs. I'll have to check.

Can you tell me the value of the window-system variable with C-h v window-system ?

I built emacs with --with-x so mine has the value x in a graphical environment and nil in a terminal.

[Trepanated]

Ok, I guess the situation with trying to draw the fringe leaves me in a strange state, because just trying to do "C-h v window-system" still calls the post-command-hook and gives the error as above, without showing the result (at least I couldn't figure out how to see it):

Error in post-command-hook (global-vi-tilde-fringe-mode-check-buffers): (void-f
unction define-fringe-bitmap)

So I tried running "emacs -q" and could see the value of window-system was nil. Then I got the idea to comment out the vi-tilde-fringe package from the list in packages.el, and once I did that spacemacs completed a successful startup. Nice! Especially since the tilde fringe thing doesn't seem vital. Anyway, then I checked the window-system value again and it was still nil.

[syl20bnr]

You did not build emacs with a window system support so the functions are not available to you.

I suggest you to uninstall emacs:

$ brew uninstall emacs

and rebuilt it with --with-x or --cocoa:

$ brew install emacs --with-x

and launch emacs with emacs -nw.

Hopefully it should work :-)

[syl20bnr]

@Trepanated I will fix what you have reported in order to be able to run spacemacs on an emacs built with no window system support. Thank you !

[Trepanated]

Sounds good. I will try it tomorrow and let you know. Thanks for your help!

[syl20bnr]

From @trishume:

Yah it would be nice to support these kind of builds. But I bet most of the time people use these builds it is unintentional, might be good to just add a warning/error message that tells people that they need to compile with GUI instead of just erroring out on tool-bar-mode

[benekastah]

Re @trishume's comment, a notification like that isn't enough IMO. I do most of my editing on a remote server via ssh, so I prefer not to install x11 at all (I've tried to get a headless x11 thing going at one point, but it was confusing and fruitless).

[syl20bnr]

@benekastah The idea is to support terminal only builds but also log a warning in *Messages* for easy identification of such builds, it may be useful to diagnostic some issues.

Does that make sense to you ?

[syl20bnr]

Or maybe we have an easy way in Emacs to get the information.

[benekastah]

@syl20bnr Oh, I misunderstood. Yes that makes sense.

[tippenein]

uninstalling and reinstalling with --with-x worked for me. Thanks @syl20bnr

[quanganhdo]

Same problem here (I'm using the macports version). Reinstalling with +x11 fixed it.

[jgm]

I get this error starting emacs in a terminal.
I installed emacs in the way recommended on the site:

$ brew tap railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport
$ brew install emacs-mac --with-spacemacs-icon  # OR, brew cask install emacs-mac
$ brew linkapps

I think I'm using the right emacs:

% which emacs
/usr/local/bin/emacs
% ls -l /usr/local/bin/emacs
lrwxr-xr-x  1 jmadmin  staff  30 Oct 20 12:25 /usr/local/bin/emacs -> ../Cellar/emacs/24.5/bin/emacs

It doesn't seem to matter whether I start with -nw or not.

EDIT: Fixed things by uninstalling homebrew-emacsmacport and installing the regular version: brew install emac --with-cocoa. After that things worked properly in the console with -nw. I would suggest you add something to your documentation suggesting that people not use emacsmacport if they intend to use spacemacs from the console.