Spacemacs freezes immediately in GUI mode

[TrakJohnson]

Description

Spacemacs freezes immediately after being started in GUI mode.

Reproduction guide 🪲

• Fresh install
• Start Emacs

Observed behaviour: 👀 💔

• spacemacs loads the background color and then freezes
  

Expected behaviour: ❤️ 😄
Spacemacs doesn't freeze

System info
Windows 10 1703 64-bit
Spacemacs master branch
Emacs 25.2 64-bit

Backtrace 🐾

Can't get anything... is there a logfile somewhere ?

---

I've tried the proposed solution in the FAQ, with no success.

• Emacs on its own works fine in GUI mode.
• Spacemancs works fine on the command line (emacs --no-window)

Is there anywhere I could get logfiles to get more info ?

[CeleritasCelery]

Does stock Emacs freeze in GUI mode?

[TrakJohnson]

@CeleritasCelery No, stock emacs works fine in GUI mode

[CeleritasCelery]

take a look at #4730 and see if some of the suggestions there help. specifically, dotspacemacs-mode-line-unicode-symbols nil

[Alexander-Miller]

Can windows send a SIGUSR2 to emacs? That will break the current elisp loop and make emacs show you a backtrace of what its been doing.

[syl20bnr]

Check your bash/shell profiles to see if you have something that could block Emacs.

[TrakJohnson]

@Alexander-Miller I did some research and it seems that sadly windows doesn't have an equivalent for this kill signal

@syl20bnr I'm confused, are there shell profiles on windows too ? I'm using the windows command line, not bash.

[CeleritasCelery]

try reinstalling (even in a separate directory) using spacemacs-base and see if the issue persists.

[TrakJohnson]

@CeleritasCelery Thanks ! I reinstalled in a seperate directory, entered no-window-mode and selected spacemacs-base, that seems to have solved it. Is there a way to install the missing packages - maybe a list so that I can install them one by one (if that's feasible) and see if the problem gets reproduced ?

[CeleritasCelery]

You can find a list of missing layers here. That should allow you to bifurcate where the problem lies.

[TrakJohnson]

@CeleritasCelery Is there anywhere specific I should put these ? I tried in dotspacemacs-configuration-layers in .spacemacs but I get Unknown layer neotree declared in dotfile.

[CeleritasCelery]

Hmm. You may need to add them to configuration-layer/declare-layers. Not sure where though. Seems like there should be an official way to do this. You could also switch distributions to spacemacs but comment out all the layers and add them back in slowly.

[TrakJohnson]

@CeleritasCelery So finally I reinstalled the full spacemacs, and it mysteriously works now. If I find more clues for reproducing it I'll post them here, but for now I think this issue can be closed. Thanks for the help !