Problem getting character in highline on git bash (via MINGW) on windows

[otbster]

So I may be the only person who has ever had this problem.

I was trying to run a ruby script (to set up an open shift webserver) on git bash (my normal terminal), on windows. It consistently hung at the getting password stage.

Eventually I worked out that the script was using highline, and that, probably due to running git bash on windows (via MINGW), the get_character method was hanging (trying to access windows functions that weren't available or something maybe). Running the script in powershell made it work just fine.

I understand this may be a niche problem.. I just wondered if you were aware of it (/if it would be easy to fix or do something about)

[abinoam]

Could you try the prerelease version?

gem install highline --pre

Em Seg, 2 de nov de 2015 12:37, otbster notifications@github.com escreveu:

So I may be the only person who has ever had this problem.

I was trying to run a ruby script (to set up an open shift webserver) on
git bash (my normal terminal), on windows. It consistently hung at the
getting password stage.

Eventually I worked out that the script was using highline, and that,
probably due to running git bash on windows (via MINGW), the get_character
method was hanging (trying to access windows functions that weren't
available or something maybe)

I understand this may be a niche problem.. I just wondered if you were
aware of it (/if it would be easy to fix or do something about)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#175.

[otbster]

Ok I've tried the prerelease version. With the following simple piece of code:

highline = HighLine.new
puts highline.ask("Password: ") { |q|
q.echo = '*'
q.whitespace = :chomp
}

In version 1.6.21, this works fine in powershell or the command prompt, but hangs in git bash (using MINW).

In version 2.0.0-prerelease, this again works fine in powershell or the command prompt. In git bash, I get the following error:

Password: C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline/terminal/io_console.rb:17:in echo=': Bad file descriptor (Errno::EBADF) from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline/terminal/io_console.rb:17:inrestore_mode'
from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline/terminal.rb:57:in ensure in raw_no_echo_mode_exec' from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline/terminal.rb:57:inraw_no_echo_mode_exec'
from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline.rb:449:in get_response_line_mode' from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline/question.rb:476:inget_response'
from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline/question.rb:481:in get_response_or_default' from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline/question_asker.rb:19:inask_once'
from C:/Ruby200-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/highline-2.0.0.pre.develop.2/lib/highline.rb:188:in ask' from test.rb:6:in

'

(Also, I say it works fine in powershell, but the normal ctrl-c to terminate execution doesn't seem to work in either version while getting a password as above - it has no effect, except for adding a funny extra character to the password).

[abinoam]

Hi @otbster ,

Although I couldn't reproduce it the same way you did, your report makes a lot of sense.
The prerelease version of HighLine relies on "io/console" to do most of the "low level" work.
I think git bash may be touching the STDIN in a way that makes ruby io/console not work properly.
Test this one-line script.
In my enviroment it works for Rubyinstaller ruby but raises error for git bash.

ruby -e "require 'io/console'; STDIN.echo = false; a = gets; puts a"

Unfortunately, I will not have much time to try to fix this for at least these next 2 weeks.
I don't understand much of Ruby on Windows, but I can see that mingw32 here on my setup has stty available. So, perhaps we could switch to using it for the low level stuff.

Thanks for reporting, as soon as I have a fix I'll contact you.
We welcome Pull Requests if you're in the mood of fixing it yourself!

[abinoam]

@otbster

Could you copy/past here the output of these two commands?

ruby -e "puts RUBY_DESCRIPTION"
ruby -e "puts RUBY_PLATFORM"

[otbster]

Thanks! Actually I think this was my fault - I just updated git (for a different reason) and during installation it says, if you select the MinTTY emulator for git bash (which is what I use), that windows console programs may not work on it, and you should use "winpty" to run them.

When I then ran
winpty ruby Programming/Ruby/Test.rb
(Test.rb containing the code snippet above that previously didn't work) it works fine, with both version of highline - 1.6.21 and 2.0.0.pre.develop.

So the moral is, pay attention to installation instructions, and use winpty when running windows programs from the MinTTY.

For what it's worth, my RUBY_DESCRIPTION is "ruby 2.0.0p0 (2013-02-24) [x64-mingw32]" and my RUBY_PLATFORM is "x64-mingw32"

[abinoam]

Thank you very much for reporting the fix. It will be useful for others that fight the same issue in the future. When I have some time I'll try to work on some "autodetect" features.
I think I'll let this issue open meanwhile so I could easily remember later.