Plugin requires bash process substitution

tom-huntington · May 26, 2022, 10:51pm

Eko’s recent buffers plugin uses process substitution

eko234/kakoune-recent-buffers/blob/44b050c06542f76a7af8ae1ba1b359ef58bc63da/kakoune-recent-buffers.kak#L26

    
      
          
          
hook global BufClose .* %{
            evaluate-commands  %sh{
              res=$(echo "$kak_quoted_opt_recent_buffers" | xargs -r printf "'%s'\n" | grep -v "$kak_bufname" | xargs -r printf "'%s' " )
              echo "set-option global recent_buffers $res"
            }
          }
          
          
define-command recent-buffers-pick-link -override %{
            info -style modal  %sh{
              res=$(paste -d' ' <(printf "j\nk\nl\n;") <(printf "$kak_quoted_opt_recent_buffers" | xargs -r printf "%s\n" | tac | tail -n +2 | head -4))
              printf "$res"
            }
            on-key %{
              info -style modal
              buffer %sh{
                [ "$kak_key" == "j" ]           && printf "$kak_quoted_opt_recent_buffers" | xargs -r printf "%s\n" | tac | tail -n +2 | sed "1q;d"
                [ "$kak_key" == "k" ]           && printf "$kak_quoted_opt_recent_buffers" | xargs -r printf "%s\n" | tac | tail -n +2 | sed "2q;d"
                [ "$kak_key" == "l" ]           && printf "$kak_quoted_opt_recent_buffers" | xargs -r printf "%s\n" | tac | tail -n +2 | sed "3q;d"
                [ "$kak_key" == "<semicolon>" ] && printf "$kak_quoted_opt_recent_buffers" | xargs -r printf "%s\n" | tac | tail -n +2 | sed "4q;d"
              }

However, this doesn’t work for me since my Kakoune runs POSIX shell.

I’m not sure how to get Kakoune to run bash, not sure if I should even do this.

Screwtapello · May 27, 2022, 10:54am

Getting Kakoune to run bash instead of a pure POSIX shell is easy: just set the $KAKOUNE_POSIX_SHELL shell variable to any shell you like before starting Kakoune.

A more permanent solution would be to fix the plugin to not use bash’s process substitution feature, and either write the data to temporary files, set up temporary FIFOs (which is what bash actually does) or re-implement the plugin in a different way.

Even if you’re not confident about making the change yourself, you could file an issue on the GitHub repository. I know I always get excited when somebody files an issue against one of my plugins; even if it’s not easy to fix, it’s encouraging to hear that other people are using my code.

tom-huntington · May 27, 2022, 8:55pm

$KAKOUNE_POSIX_SHELL

Thanks

Even if you’re not confident about making the change yourself

I’ll have a go as a learning exercise, thanks

eko234 · May 28, 2022, 9:02pm

Hi!, I just merged your pull request, thanks for your contribution, hope you are finding it as useful as I do

tom-huntington · May 29, 2022, 12:28am

Yes, you really need more than just ga