A different elm-format crash

[Scribbler]

When I save an .elm file, formatting isn’t happening, and in the console I get the following error:

Sublime Text 3
elm 0.19
I’ve got “Elm Language Support” in the “install_prereleases” section
I’ve upgraded the package

Error loading scope:source.glsl: Unable to find syntax file for scope source.glsl in Packages/Elm Language Support/Syntaxes/Elm.sublime-syntax
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File “./python3.3/subprocess.py”, line 1104, in _execute_child
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File “C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 3\sublime_plugin.py”, line 1072, in run_
    return self.run(edit)
  File “C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Roaming\Sublime Text 3\Installed Packages\Elm Language Support.sublime-package\elm_format.py”, line 33, in run
  File “./python3.3/subprocess.py”, line 819, in __init__
  File “./python3.3/subprocess.py”, line 1110, in _execute_child
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

This was working fine until a few days ago, when the formatting just suddenly stopped working. I haven’t made any changes to my Sublime Text configuration, nor to where elm-format is stored. I’ve checked and made sure that elm-format is still in the path.

Source coloring, compiling and auto-completion seem all to work fine.

I’ve tried reinstalling Elm Language Support, elm-format, tried downloading ELS from the github repository into the Packages folder, but with no success.

[Kevin Yank]

Hi there! Sorry to hear you're having this trouble. Are you the same person who posted about this issue on the Elm Slack #editors-and-ides channel? I ask because that person says they were able to fix the problem themselves, and I want to make sure you still need help.

We did release a new beta version of the package around the time you started having this error, so I wonder if it's something that changed in that release.

@ianmackenzie, any idea if #59 could have caused this somehow?

[Scribbler]

Hi,

Nope, I’m a different person. :) That said, I switched to the Atom editor due to there being more elm tools there, and ran into a similar problem, so I did dig deeper.

It might just be my newness to using npm, but I noticed that once I started searching through my system, there was no elm-format.exe anywhere. Instead, there is only elm-format.cmd in the npm elm-format directory.

So, I just tested with Sublime Text as well, the solution both there and in Atom was to change the path (in this case the “elm_format_binary” setting to <my home path>\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\elm-format.cmd

I don’t know if something has changed in how npm does things or if there’s something else that caused it, but it’s working for me after I made that change.

[Ian Mackenzie]

Hmm, it seems like it could indeed be the removal of shell=True that caused the issue - looks like others have run into similar problems when trying to execute something other than a normal executable on the system PATH.

It seems that there are ways to execute non-.exe files without the use of shell=True, but I'm guessing that just using shell=True is the easiest and most reliable way to replicate "do whatever would happen if someone typed elm-format into a user shell". And the security issues aren't quite as bad in our case - it's not like we're executing a shell command on a server based on input provided by a client.

@sentience, would you like me to open another PR switching elm and elm-format to use shell=True?

[Matt Brandly]

i'm on OS X and also getting this message!

Error loading scope:source.glsl: Unable to find syntax file for scope source.glsl in Packages/Elm Language Support/Syntaxes/Elm.sublime-syntax

...but with no stack trace. i'm also on Sublime Text 3 and elm 0.19.

elm-format has been working for me in Sublime for quite some time. i'm not sure what changed.

[Matt Brandly]

i found this debug flag! i'm on elm-format 0.8.1, and i'm seeing this in Sublime's console:

[Elm says]: (elm-format) b"I couldn't figure out what version of Elm you are using!\n\nYou should either run elm-format from the directory containing\nyour elm.json (for Elm 0.19) or elm-package.json (for Elm 0.18),\nor tell me which version of Elm with --elm-version=0.19 or --elm-version=0.18" 
errors: b''