Tip: Saving files in Emacs during an upgrade

zbiko · 2017-04-30 21:37:14

I ran across an unfortunate error after upgrading from Emacs 25.1 to 25.2. I had an Emacs window open with unsaved files. When I tried to save them I got the message

find-coding-systems-region: Loading charset map: No such file or directory, BIG5-1

I was able to work around this with

ln -s /usr/share/emacs/25.2 /usr/share/emacs/25.1

Then save files, restart the editor and remove symlink. Just posting in case this helps someone. It might be safer, if you notice you're about to upgrade Emacs, to save files and quit first.

seth · 2017-05-01 06:11:34

Better suited at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Em … leshooting ?

WorMzy · 2017-05-01 06:40:09

No. Masquerading one library as another should not be documented as a suitable workaround, especially not on the Arch Wiki.

If you are looking for a quick fix, extracting the old library from your pacman cache might work, depending on what was upgraded and what the old library is linked against. However, the safest option is to rollback the upgrade.

Note: I am not an emacs user, there may be a better way to avoid/resolve this problem (other than the obvious -- saving everything before upgrading).

seth · 2017-05-01 07:05:34

I would have argued that the missing file is a 20+ year old charmap, but emacs also stores all its lisp scripts in /usr/share/emacs... *all* of them ... many, many scripts ...
So while masquerading *that* file is totally safe (it's a national standard, it won't change), symlinking anything but /usr/share/emacs/<version>/etc/charsets/ is probably risky, yes. Especially beyond brief action.

---
I guess C-x M-c M-p will allow you to alter the charset path - in any case there's some shortcut for sure ;-)

ewaller · 2017-05-01 14:15:36

WorMzy wrote:

No. Masquerading one library as another should not be documented as a suitable workaround, .

In general, I agree. When I saw this post yesterday, I realized that it was a brilliant temporary solution to a transient condition to save data. Note that the OP did specify that they had unlinked the symlink immediately after recovering their unsaved files.
This caught my eye as I too has encountered an issue; fortunately I had no unsaved data. I had updated emacs, then found I could no longer launch dired. After a bit of thought, I realized the update borked the running version.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-04-30 21:37:14

Tip: Saving files in Emacs during an upgrade

#2 2017-05-01 06:11:34

Re: Tip: Saving files in Emacs during an upgrade

#3 2017-05-01 06:40:09

Re: Tip: Saving files in Emacs during an upgrade

#4 2017-05-01 07:05:34

Re: Tip: Saving files in Emacs during an upgrade

#5 2017-05-01 14:15:36

Re: Tip: Saving files in Emacs during an upgrade

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