Freeze while searching in file using /

[achikin]

Description

Emacs freezes while searching in file using /

Reproduction guide 🐞

• Start Emacs
• Open quite big file (200+ lines)
• Press /
• Type in one letter

Observed behaviour: 👀 💔

• Emacs takes up 96% CPU and freezes

Expected behaviour: ❤️ 😄

• Emacs searches for the letter

System Info 💻

• OS: darwin
• Emacs: 25.2.1
• Spacemacs: 0.200.9
• Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. 7e57b1f)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: vim
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

(sql helm auto-completion syntax-checking better-defaults emacs-lisp git clojure html markdown parinfer)

• System configuration features: NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS NS MODULES

Backtrace 🐾

[bobsongplus]

There is too little information to diagnose the problem, you can use profiler-start command to check where stacked

[delaanthonio]

@achikin Do you get this issue when using the Spacemacs master branch?

[braham-snyder]

does excluding the spaceline package (add it to dotspacemacs-excluded-packages, which should be in a setq in your init file) circumvent the issue? if so, may be:

TheBB/spaceline#123 (comment)

if not, the pkill -USR2 bit in there may still help you diagnose your issue (it opens a backtrace ASAP)

[mathpunk]

I thought the recommendation to disable unicode in powerline here TheBB/spaceline#123 (comment) fixed my issue, but, it just happened again. I will try pkill -USR2 next time it happens.

[braham-snyder]

Did you set it in dotspacemacs/init? For what it's worth, if you set it in dotspacemacs/user-config (and possibly even in dotspacemacs/user-init), it won't actually be set in time to take effect.

[mathpunk]

I did not! I've kept away from that expression entirely. I have now set it in dotspacemacs/init, after the setq-default expression. Thanks, I'll see how it goes.

[carloscheddar]

I'm running the latest develop changes and this issue is still happening even after I added (setq dotspacemacs-mode-line-unicode-symbols nil) to dotspacemacs/init. I can search a few times but after 6 or 7 times it hangs.

[carloscheddar]

Quick update: Excluding the spaceline package definitely fixes the issue. I also removed the (setq dotspacemacs-mode-line-unicode-symbols nil) line and everything works correctly.

[braham-snyder]

@carloscheddar that's odd -- but just to double check: a line already exists in the default .spacemacs file as: (setq dotspacemacs-mode-line-unicode-symbols t) within dotspacemacs/init (not within dotspacemacs/user-init). Does changing that line to use nil and restarting (SPC q r) still not work?

If not, when the freeze occurs, you might want to triple check your modeline for any unicode characters: I suspect I initially ran into trouble partly because the only unicode symbols I used on my modeline were the workspace numbers, which are frequently hidden (so I didn't notice that I hadn't successfully turned them off).

[carloscheddar]

@braham-snyder After verifying my config I finally found what was causing the hang.
I had added this line to the user-config from a suggestion on the mac section of the readme:

(setq powerline-default-separator 'utf-8)

After removing it everything works as expected even with dotspacemacs-mode-line-unicode-symbols set to t.

[jonathanj]

My powerline-default-separator is set to 'slant and I still have this hanging, with the same trace as in #9595. I'm going to try @braham-snyder's suggestion regarding dotspacemacs-mode-line-unicode-symbols.

[x-ji]

It also doesn't work for me. I'm not even using spaceline. I'm using vim-powerline. Is there a way to just disable this instant search behavior and only search when I hit enter?

[JonathanReeve]

This bug is driving me nuts. It will lock up my emacs for about 30s-1m, at times, when I search for anything in a large file. Is there a way to disable this instant search until at least three or four characters have been typed?

[duianto]

@JonathanReeve
It might help to try another search tool.

It's chosen from the .spacemacs variable: dotspacemacs-search-tools

On the develop branch there's also support for rg:
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

The default value is:
'("rg" "ag" "pt" "ack" "grep")

It uses the first tool it finds, as the comment above the variable says:

;; List of search tool executable names. Spacemacs uses the first installed
;; tool of the list. Supported tools are `rg', `ag', `pt', `ack' and `grep'.

[JonathanReeve]

It doesn't seem to matter which tool you use. I've tried it with ag and grep both, but the problem persists. In fact, I'm writing this comment now while waiting for a search to finish highlighting on a large org file. It's been about a minute or two.

Once spacemacs gets started with searching and highlighting single letters, it can't be stopped: not with Ctrl+G, not with Esc, or by trying to close Emacs.

I'll echo @x-ji's question above and ask: is there a way to disable typeahead search? From there it should be possible to disable it for large files.

[duianto]

These variables might be what your looking for:

• helm-grep-input-idle-delay

Its value is 0.6
Same as ‘helm-input-idle-delay’ but for grep commands.
It have a higher value than ‘helm-input-idle-delay’ to avoid
flickering when updating.

• helm-input-idle-delay

Its value is 0.01
Idle time before updating, specified in seconds.

[JonathanReeve]

Apparently when you set those values to a higher number, say, 1.0, it still has the issue. To reproduce, try doing this:

• Get a large org mode file (or probably any other type with syntax highlighting). A 500k file would be fine.
• Search the file for something. Say, abc.
• Notice that emacs totally freezes up after typing a, and insists on highlighting every single instance of the letter a in your file. Notice that the freeze lasts about a minute.

[gberenfield]

Unfortunately none of the above helped. I did my trick usual of commenting out large chunks of config and found that disabling smooth scrolling fixed it for me.

dotspacemacs-smooth-scrolling nil

HTH
Greg

[JonathanReeve]

I don't see what scrolling has to do with it. I'm not even scrolling when this is happening. But anyway, I've had smooth scrolling disabled this whole time, so that doesn't help.

[gberenfield]

Well neither do I but it seemingly worked. Today, not so well (froze again).

So in debugging, the last line before freezing is
command-execute(evil-ex-search-forward)

This is in evil-commands.el in the base evil package. Looking there, I found this bug
emacs-evil/evil#1101

Testing 'search-invisible' set to nil and will see if that works...

[TheBB]

This should have been fixed in Evil.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Please let us know if this issue is still valid!