Re: How to fix run-help-* functions?

[Mikael Magnusson <mikachu@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/13/23, Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 4:14 AM Michele Venturi <dardo82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 7, 2023, 18:41 Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> If you don't do the "make install" part, you get an error about a
>>> "shift" count being wrong, which probably looks like a bug rather than
>>> a usage problem.
>>
>> I've tried this but it doesn't make any difference,
>
> When you "configure" or by passing an environment variable to "make"
> you can specify a custom location for the help files.
>
> Because run-help is a shell function, it doesn't have a "source file"
> and an "object file" so the source itself contains a replacement
> string @runhelpdir@ which is updated by the installfns.sh script
> during "make install".  Yes, we could have put a "run-help.in" file
> somewhere and processed that at a different build step to create
> run-help, but that complicates installing the rest of the functions.
>
> The help directory is populated by the Util/helpfiles script, which is
> run by "make install" in the Doc subdirectory (but I do not recommend
> attempting to run make in individual subdirectories rather than
> letting the top-level Makefile drive it.)
>
> However, all of that turns out to be necessary but secondary, because
> the real problem is that you're using run-help wrong.
[moved this part to after]
> Question for the audience is whether we want to consider this a bug
> and make it possible to use run-help as a standalone function.

It could/should at least output some diagnostic, because it is very
easy for an end-user (or very confused developer) to do this:
% git<invoke run-help>
[git manpage is shown]
# above prompt has now changed to this:
% run-help git
% git<now press page up and enter which changes this line to:>
% run-help git
git is /usr/bin/git
run-help:shift:106: shift count must be <= $#


> You're not intended to type out "run-help sudo" and hit enter, you're
> intended to type "sudo" and then invoke the run-help ZLE widget
> (normally ESC h or Alt+h), which then calls the run-help function with
> some preliminary setup having been done.

Looking at the code for processcmd it seems to literally only insert
the string "run-help git" on the command line, so what exactly is this
preliminary setup? I can't find it. The comment for the function is:
/* Run '$WIDGET $commandword' and then restore the command-line using
push-line. */
which is missing some key piece of information.

-- 
Mikael Magnusson