find-file does not report missing gzip

[Lennart Borgman]

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Please write in English if possible, because the Emacs maintainers
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Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

1) Make sure gzip is not on the path.
2) start Emacs with "emacs -Q"
3) M-x find-file, choose a tar.gz file (something.tar.gz)

The output in the message buffer will be like this:
...
Loading jka-compr...done
uncompressing sml-mode.tar.gz...
File exists, but cannot be read
Loading tar-mode...done
Parsing tar file...
Warning: premature EOF parsing tar file

However if debug-on-error and debug-on-signal is set to t you will see 
this kind of backtrace (where I replaced the value byte-code's first 
param to be able to paste it here):

Debugger entered--entering a function:
* signal(file-error ("Searching for program" "no such file or directory" 
"gzip"))
* byte-code("..." [error-code local-file visit notfound file-error 3 
signal "Opening input file"] 4)
 jka-compr-insert-file-contents("c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" t nil nil 
nil)
 apply(jka-compr-insert-file-contents ("c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" t 
nil nil nil))
 jka-compr-handler(insert-file-contents "c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" t 
nil nil nil)
 insert-file-contents("c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" t)
 byte-code("..." [inhibit-read-only filename t insert-file-contents] 3)
 find-file-noselect-1(#<buffer sml-mode.tar.gz> 
"c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" nil nil "c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" 
(14882 (41179 . 25295)))
 find-file-noselect("c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" nil nil t)
 find-file("c:/dl/emacs/sml-mode.tar.gz" t)
 call-interactively(find-file)

****************
These are my thoughts about this:

When `jka-compr-call-process' is called (via `jka-compr-handler') and 
gzip does not exist you do not get any clue to what happened. The only
thing the user gets to see is a message saying "File exists, but is not 
readable". That message is from `after-find-file'. The actual error has
then been lost due to the in `find-file-noselect-1'.

I think this should be corrected somewhere. The weak point seems 
actually to be the error handling in `find-file-noselect-1' but I guess
that has a history and a backlogg.  Maybe the error handling in 
find-file-noselect1 should be changed? Does it really cover cases like 
this one?

**************************************
In GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.0.2195)
of 2005-06-20 on W2ONE
Distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.0.2195
configured using `configure --with-gcc (3.2) --cflags -Id:/g/include'

Important settings:
 value of $LC_ALL: nil
 value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
 value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
 value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
 value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
 value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
 value of $LC_TIME: nil
 value of $LANG: ENU
 locale-coding-system: cp1252
 default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Debugger

Minor modes in effect:
 tool-bar-mode: t
 encoded-kbd-mode: t
 mouse-wheel-mode: t
 tooltip-mode: t
 auto-compression-mode: t
 menu-bar-mode: t
 blink-cursor-mode: t
 unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
 utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
 line-number-mode: t
 next-error-follow-minor-mode:  Fol

Recent input:
M-x s e t - v a SPC <return> d e b u g SPC o n SPC
e SPC <return> t <return> M-x <up> <return> d e b u
g - o n - s i g n a l SPC <return> t <return> C-x C-f
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace>
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace>
<backspace> d l / e m a SPC s m SPC SPC SPC SPC <return>
M-x r e p o r t - SPC SPC <return>

Recent messages:
Loading tool-bar...done
Loading image...done
For information about the GNU Project and its goals, type C-h C-p.
Loading help-fns...done
Loading easymenu...done
Loading jka-compr...done
uncompressing sml-mode.tar.gz...
Loading debug...done
Entering debugger...
Loading emacsbug...done

--
Lennart
från Lund
address@hidden