Opening config produces Errno 22

[SuperSandro2000]

Problem

Trying to open the config file on Windows 10 with beet -vv config -e leads to error: Could not edit configuration: [Errno 22] Invalid argument. Checked the file and it exists and would be open with Notepad++.

Setup

• OS: Windows 10
• Python version: Python 3.6 (Python 2.7 is installed to put not used by default)
• beets version: 1.4.6
• Turning off plugins made problem go away (yes/no): don't have any

My configuration (output of beet config) is:

{}

[sampsyo]

Please include the complete output from the command.

[SuperSandro2000]

This is the complete command output.

C:\Users\Sandro>beet -vv config -e
error: Could not edit configuration: [Errno 22] Invalid argument

C:\Users\Sandro>

[sampsyo]

That's odd! I would have expected more output from setting up beets before the crash.

Have you tried setting your %EDITOR% environment variable to a specific command? That's what beets tries to use to open the config file, by default. Otherwise, it tries to use the Windows start command. So maybe it's worth trying to run start C:\path\to\file.yaml to see if that works.

[SuperSandro2000]

%EDITOR% sadly does not exist by default.
start C:\Users\Sandro\AppData\Roaming\beets\config.yaml opens up notepad++ how it should.

[sampsyo]

Strange! I'm not sure what to suggest because I don't have a Windows machine to use to reproduce the problem. Would you be willing to dig into the code to help see where things are going wrong? The editor_command function in beets.util would be a good place to start.

[SuperSandro2000]

I don't get the reason for that line https://github.com/beetbox/beets/blob/master/beets/util/__init__.py#L911

With some print statements we see that the editor command is duped:

    # Split the command string into its arguments.
    try:
        args = shlex_split(command)
        print(args)
    except ValueError:  # Malformed shell tokens.
        args = [command]
    print(args)
    args.insert(0, args[0])  # for argv[0]
    print(args)
    args += targets

Output:

['start']
['start', 'start']

I would remove it if it is not needed for Linux. args should't contain two starts as it will spawn an unnecessary console on Windows.

---

To fix the actual issue I switched to os.system() for Windows as a new process needs to be called anyway and invoke the editor command on each file in targets. I have no real idea if that works on Unix systems correctly as I can't easily test it right now. If it needs to be changed I am more than willing to change it.

Did a pull #2851 to fix this issue.

[jackwilsdon]

The args.insert(0, args[0]) is needed for *nix to ensure that the process gets it's own name correctly. The correct fix here is to probably to just not add that on Windows.

[SuperSandro2000]

I did change the PR to reflect that but on windows os.system would be a better choice and most windows editors don't support opening multiple files in one command anyway.
#2851

[sampsyo]

Care to expand on why os.system would be a better choice? I presume you mean because Windows doesn't really support exec-like functionality, so we're getting a subprocess anyway. Is that right?

[SuperSandro2000]

You're right and why appveyor fails, I have no plan.

[MinchinWeb]

cf #2717

[sampsyo]

Wow; thanks for the note, @MinchinWeb—it's amazing how quickly I can forget about comments I wrote. 😳

[MinchinWeb]

@sampsyo Happy to lend a new pair of eyes. I started poking around through the issues because I ran into this myself. Hope it can be fixed soon!

[stale]

Is this still relevant? If so, what is blocking it? Is there anything you can do to help move it forward?

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[SuperSandro2000]

/unstale