darcs help breaks my shell

Question

I have just installed darcs 2.1.2.2. When I type darcs help, sth less-like shows up. When I dismiss it with q it goes away but I don't get prompt and can't execute any commands. C-c doesn't work either. I am using bash on gentoo.

Answer 1

I have no idea what darcs is, but when bash fails to return to the prompt that some command as part of a pipeline is still running. For instance if you ran:

cmd | less

And exited less, but cmd did not die from a broken pipe, then cmd would continue to run and bash would continue to wait until it exited. It also might not respond to signals and keypresses if it didn't have access to the tty.

You will need a second terminal to check and see if any processes are hanging around after trying to dismiss darcs. Sometimes Ctrl-Z or Ctrl-\ will work where Ctrl-C doesn't. There is probably no fix other than to look at darcs and figure out why it is not dimissing like it should. If it is really launching less, then maybe typing ">" before "q" will make it exit properly.

Answer 2

In this situation (terminal messed up, can't see what you're typing) the "reset" command will often fix things.

I would try again with a newer darcs, eg version 2.3 released today. If the problem still happens, you can probably change this behaviour - see the darcs manual. Otherwise, folks on the #darcs irc channel will be able to help.