Emacs dashboard breaks daemon with latest emacs pgtk native comp build

[drishal]

Hello, for some reason if I use emacs --daemon it fails to detach, does not return the prompt and does not properly start the client on using the latest git on emacs dashboard
tried a minimal config as here
dashboard-test .el.txt

(github for some reason does not like .el so uploading as .txt)

EDIT
the command just hangs here

Notes:
emacsPgtkNativeComp Built on nixos unstable with home-manager at this commit nix-community/emacs-overlay@3244c10

[drishal]

seems like M-x dashboard-refresh-buffer does reload dashboard but for some reason (setq initial-buffer-choice (lambda () (get-buffer "*dashboard*"))) prevents emacs --daemon from detaching, and in the actual emacs it loads the scratch buffer

Anyone having any ideas why its suddenly happening? this used to work perfectly fine a week back

on further inspection with emacs -Q I get this

command-line-1: Value returned by ‘initial-buffer-choice’ is not a live buffer: nil

[drishal]

UPDATE: Solved issue by adding

(dashboard-refresh-buffer)

LMFAO

idk why (dashboard-setup-startup-hook) was not starting up the dashboard buffer..hmm

Maybe please add (dashboard-refresh-buffer) in the readme

[jcs090218]

Sorry for ignoring this issue. I think this is an existing issue for a long while.

Function (dashboard-refresh-buffer) has the flag dashboard-force-refresh to t. These are my guesses:

• Dashboard inhibited from the command line, https://github.com/emacs-dashboard/emacs-dashboard/blob/master/dashboard.el#L461
• Something went wrong with these three conditions, https://github.com/emacs-dashboard/emacs-dashboard/blob/master/dashboard.el#L396-L398

I think the first point would be my best guess since isn't daemon has to be called from the command line? 😕

[drishal]

Hmm according to someone on doom-emacs discord (on help-nondoom-users channel) this hook seems to reproduce the bug

emacs-dashboard/dashboard.el

Line 462 in 09290bf

(add-hook 'after-init-hook (lambda ()

[jcs090218]

You mean the after-init-hook does not get called?

[drishal]

Hmm seems like it
tbh I am not really good with actually going through the package source so not that sure 😅

[jcs090218]

Maybe try overriding the function dashboard-setup-startup-hook

(with-eval-after-load 'dashboard
  (defun dashboard-setup-startup-hook ()
    ;;(when (< (length command-line-args) 2)
    (add-hook 'after-init-hook (lambda ()
                                 ;; Display useful lists of items
                                 (dashboard-insert-startupify-lists)))
    (add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook (lambda ()
                                    (switch-to-buffer dashboard-buffer-name)
                                    (goto-char (point-min))
                                    (redisplay)
                                    (run-hooks 'dashboard-after-initialize-hook)))
    ;;)
    ))

place it in your init.el and see if that works?

[drishal]

this way?

(with-eval-after-load 'dashboard
  (defun dashboard-setup-startup-hook ()
    ;;(when (< (length command-line-args) 2)
    (add-hook 'after-init-hook (lambda ()
                                 ;; Display useful lists of items
                                 (dashboard-insert-startupify-lists)))
    (add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook (lambda ()
                                    (switch-to-buffer dashboard-buffer-name)
                                    (goto-char (point-min))
                                    (redisplay)
                                    (run-hooks 'dashboard-after-initialize-hook)))
    ;;)
    ))
(use-package dashboard
  :straight t
  :config
  (dashboard-setup-startup-hook)
)
(setq initial-buffer-choice (lambda () (get-buffer "*dashboard*")))

(the daemon still does not detach in this case)

[zadca123]

same problem here

[archer-65]

Same problem, on both Arch and NixOS

[alxleroux]

same

[ananthakumaran]

NixOS user here, sharing a bit more context that might be useful in debugging the issue.

;; command-line-args
("/nix/store/qr4p11zqxppr4r8jz0ypvra3jbsil07k-emacs-pgtk-native-comp-20220528.0/bin/emacs" "-l" "cl-loaddefs" "-l" "nix-generated-autoload")

# ❯ tail $(which emacs)
    newNativeLoadPath+=("")
fi

export EMACSLOADPATH="${newLoadPath[*]}"
export emacsWithPackages_siteLisp=/nix/store/z9ara8c5g37k7dj936418l0kkb50ajis-emacs-packages-deps/share/emacs/site-lisp

export EMACSNATIVELOADPATH="${newNativeLoadPath[*]}"
export emacsWithPackages_siteLispNative=/nix/store/z9ara8c5g37k7dj936418l0kkb50ajis-emacs-packages-deps/share/emacs/native-lisp:

exec /nix/store/qr4p11zqxppr4r8jz0ypvra3jbsil07k-emacs-pgtk-native-comp-20220528.0/bin/emacs -l cl-loaddefs -l nix-generated-autoload "$@"

I think the assumption that user don't want to see dashboard when command line arguments are passed doesn't seem to play well with the newer changes at nix (or other) package level #23

[ricardoricho]

Hi, I think there are two issues, need to change get-buffer to get-buffer-create as @willbush suggested here #334 (comment) and there is a "bug" in

emacs-dashboard/dashboard.el

Line 457 in 34d1f97

(when (< (length command-line-args) 2)

there should be if instead of whenso the "proper" hook get added (I don't know why they are different hooks)

Try this config:

(use-package dashboard
  :ensure t
  :init
  (add-hook 'after-init-hook #'dashboard-insert-sartupify-lists)
  :config
  (setq initial-buffer-choice (lambda () (get-buffer-create "*dashboard*"))))

Hope this helps.

[drishal]

Hmm either using (dashboard-refresh-buffer) or get-buffer-create works for now

[jcs090218]

I think the issue is

emacs-dashboard/dashboard.el

Line 384 in 34d1f97

(let ((buffer-exists (buffer-live-p (get-buffer dashboard-buffer-name)))

and

emacs-dashboard/dashboard.el

Line 393 in 34d1f97

(not buffer-exists))

These lines was added 6 years ago. I assumed we no longer need these lines since get-buffer-create should be pretty safe? 😕

[jcs090218]

Okay, I encountered this in the normal client (no daemon) as well. I think the issue is emacs trying to pick up the *dashboard* buffer but it hasn't been created. But since dashboard is the last thing to load, we should just use get-buffer-create function instead.

Updated the documentation, in #382.

[port19x]

What worked for me was replacing
:hook (after-init . dashboard-refresh-buffer)
with :hook (server-after-make-frame . dashboard-refresh-buffer)