start /tabna leaves blank windows when running batch scripts

[rjperrella]

Hi Folks,
I'm running one
START /TABNA after another in a batch script in order to setup my preferred development environment (which is take command of course!)

I'm using TakeCommand V15 64 bit but I tested this under several versions - it seems to have the same issue.

It looks like this:

REM File: SETDEV.BTM
start "build client" /tabna tcc /c "buildjs" watch
start "build node" /tabna tcc /c "buildnode" watch
start "test client" /tabna tcc /c "testjs"
REM start "test node" /tabna tcc /c "testnode"
start "test lib" /tabna tcc /c "testlib"
start "fossil" /tabna "fossil" ui --port 8967

buildjs, buildnode, testjs, testnode are all batch files that run NodeJS commands. NodeJS is a Javascript interpreter based on Chrome's V8 engine.

When I run this simple batch script, I get a bunch of "broken" tabs. That is, they show all white windows and each has a tab name that is missing -- except for the fossil one at the end which always works well (and isn't a batch file.)

To fix, I tried inserting delay commands between each start. This had no effect.

Now, when I run the same script under ConEmu it works fine (from that perspective but ConEmu has other issues).

Any ideas?
Ron

 

[rjperrella]

Ok, here's a shorter version you can run yourself to see the problem.

create a batch file called donothing.bat
rem file:donothing.bat
echo doing nothing

then run it in a tab:

start "donothing" /tab donothing.bat

I get a window that is all black and shows nothing. it just hangs. The windows cursor goes to a spinning circle. The tab has no name and I don't get the output from the echo command.

 

[David Marcus]

I get a window that is all black and shows nothing. it just hangs. The windows cursor goes to a spinning circle. The tab has no name and I don't get the output from the echo command.

Works fine when I try it. TCC 17.00.70 x64 Windows 7 [Version 6.1.7601]

 

[vefatica]

With any of v15, v16, and v17, it works sometimes and fails sometimes. When it fails, I see the likes of this.

I can close the bad tab, but after all this testing I have 16 orphaned instances of TCC.

 

[rjperrella]

Vince, I am seeing the same thing. Lots of conhost.exe instances left over after testing.

-Ron

 

[rjperrella]

Ok I've done a bit more testing. It appears that .EXE files run just fine in the other tab. I've run Digital Mars C++, Perl, Far Manager, and all work fine. The problem seems to be limited to batch files. Also, it works fine from the command line - I can execute each line of my script and it works fine. When run in a batch, it fails (different) each time, where failure is one or more broken tabs.

 

[rconn]

Ok, here's a shorter version you can run yourself to see the problem.

create a batch file called donothing.bat
rem file:donothing.bat
echo doing nothing

then run it in a tab:

start "donothing" /tab donothing.bat

I get a window that is all black and shows nothing. it just hangs. The windows cursor goes to a spinning circle. The tab has no name and I don't get the output from the echo command.

Do you get that running it once manually from the command line? I tried it 100 times here (manually) and couldn't reproduce it. Then I put it in a batch file loop and I could see it happen maybe three or four times out of a hundred.

Unfortunately, in the case of the loop it isn't TCC, it's the Windows create & attach console api's - they just do not behave well if called really fast from the same session. (Old bug; Microsoft knows about it but hasn't ever fixed it.)

There's another potential problem here - if you start a new tab that exits immediately (as in your "tcc /c" example), there's a good chance that the session will exit before TCMD can attach to the console and create a tab for it.

What happens with your original batch file if you add something like a "delay 1" (i.e., "start "build client" /tabna tcc /c (delay 1 & "buildjs" watch)"?

 

[vefatica]

Not even a 5 second delay helps in the one I reported. Using

v:\> type donothing.btm
delay 5
echo Doing nothing!

v:\> start "donothing" /tab donothing.btm

Sometimes a dead tab is created (no title, no output) and the TCC is orphaned when the tab is closed. It also happens sometimes if I use /tabna.

 

[rconn]

Not even a 5 second delay helps in the one I reported. Using

v:\> type donothing.btm
delay 5
echo Doing nothing!

v:\> start "donothing" /tab donothing.btm

Sometimes a dead tab is created (no title, no output) and the TCC is orphaned when the tab is closed. It also happens sometimes if I use /tabna.

Never reproducible here. But I made a change to work around the Windows bug that causes TCC to display an empty GUI window instead of a console window in the tab (because Windows is returning a null or invalid handle when querying the console).

 

[rjperrella]

Never reproducible here. But I made a change to work around the Windows bug that causes TCC to display an empty GUI window instead of a console window in the tab (because Windows is returning a null or invalid handle when querying the console).

Not even a 5 second delay helps in the one I reported. Using

v:\> type donothing.btm
delay 5
echo Doing nothing!

v:\> start "donothing" /tab donothing.btm

Sometimes a dead tab is created (no title, no output) and the TCC is orphaned when the tab is closed. It also happens sometimes if I use /tabna.

Never reproducible here. But I made a change to work around the Windows bug that causes TCC to display an empty GUI window instead of a console window in the tab (because Windows is returning a null or invalid handle when querying the console).

Thanks for looking into this.

The key seems to be whether I'm running a batch script or an EXE. If it is an EXE, it never has the problem.

I tried this again today (2/14/2015) with TCMD17 "32-bit" and the problem did not occur! (2/8/2015 build) I tried repeatedly to make it fail and couldn't. I retested with V15 (32 and 64 bit) and it failed immediately. I tried V 17 -64 bit but I had tried this in the past and my 30 day key had expired!

Sounds like my solution is to upgrade to V17, which I will do.

 

[rjperrella]

Thanks for looking into this.

The key seems to be whether I'm running a batch script or an EXE. If it is an EXE, it never has the problem.

I tried this again today (2/14/2015) with TCMD17 "32-bit" and the problem did not occur! (2/8/2015 build) I tried repeatedly to make it fail and couldn't. I retested with V15 (32 and 64 bit) and it failed immediately. I tried V 17 -64 bit but I had tried this in the past and my 30 day key had expired!

Sounds like my solution is to upgrade to V17, which I will do.

Just for posterity - my exact version is:TCC 17.00.75 x64

Working like a champ!