Pure: How to disable background processes started by pure?

[wedi]

Hi!
First things first: I fell in love you’re theme on first sight. It’s just neat. :)

There is just one thing I’m experiencing. Every time I'm closing a session in iTerm2 it prompts me with the following message:

This window is running the following jobs: cat and zsh.

My questions are: What causes this message? What feature(s) would I loose when I somehow disable this? And finally: how can I disable this?
Of course I could ask iTerm to not prompt me for running processes but most likely I’d close to many tabs accidentally then. ;)

Thanks for your help!

[mafredri]

Glad you're enjoying the theme, wedi!

Now, what you're experiencing is an unfortunate side-effect of using zpty for async work processing (via zsh-async).

iTerm is reacting to the fact that a second zsh instance (a clone, if you will) is running inside zpty. Furthermore, the async worker uses coproc cat as a way to synchronize output between multiple async tasks so that their output isn't garbled.

I have not researched in-depth for a solution, but a workaround is not using Cmd+W. Instead Ctrl+D or typing exit at the console since a clean exit won't trigger the prompt.

would I loose when I somehow disable this?

You would essentially lose the git functionality for checking the remote for changes (git fetch) and if your current working tree is dirty (git status).

how can I disable this?

Add this at the end of your .zshrc, after initializing pure with prompt pure.

async_stop_worker prompt_pure
async_job() { }

Without the worker running, neither is the second zsh and cat. And by overriding the async_job function as a no-op, you won't see errors like: async_job:zpty:4: no such pty command: prompt_pure.

Another alternative would be using Terminal instead of iTerm, it does not react to the zpty processes, but does prevent you from accidentally stopping a terminal with a regular command running. Yet another option would be to report this upstream on the iTerm issue tracker.

[wedi]

Hi mafredri,
thank you for your prompt and in-depth answer on that topic!

As disabling the background process would cut pure too much for me I won’t go that route but maybe that helps someone else searching for this topic.

So I tried CRTL+D which logs me cleanly out of a ssh session to a server (where I’m using bash) but zsh on my Mac just tells me to "use logout to logout" instead. :(

As the _Terminal.app_ is no option compared to _iTerm2_ I’d love to get this solved upstream. I’d be glad if you could help me reporting this. I drafted a report maybe you could have a quick look at it wether I understood things correctly? Maybe you could even help me with arguing why it’s a bug and no feature? ;) They are also asking for steps to reproduce. Would it be too big a request if I asked you for a short example to add to the bug report?

Thank you!

Hello!
I am using the pure ZSH-Prompt theme which uses the zsh-built-in module zpty to make asynchronous calls to git.
_zpty:_

is useful for running commands non-interactively which expect an interactive environment.

While Apple’s _Terminal.app_ ignores the second zsh process started by ´zpty´ when closing the window _iTerm2_ aks me if I really want to close that tab.

This tab is running the following jobs: cat and zsh.

I think iTerm2 should ignore that process as well.

From iTerm2s new issue template:

_Detailed steps to reproduce the problem:_

1. 
   
   
   2.
   
3.

_What happened:_
When closing a session the following message pops up:

This window is running the following jobs: cat and zsh.

_What should have happened:_
The session should close without prompting because ...

[mafredri]

thank you for your prompt and in-depth answer on that topic!

You're welcome, and I wish to point out that @sindresorhus is the original creator of the theme, if it wasn't for him I wouldn't be contributing to it ^_^.

So I tried CRTL+D which logs me cleanly out of a ssh session to a server (where I’m using bash) but zsh on my Mac just tells me to "use logout to logout" instead. :(

Weird. You could try loading a different preset for your keys in Profiles -> Keys.

Maybe you could even help me with arguing why it’s a bug and no feature? ;)

I would love to, but I don't know enough about what's happening to do that :/. Maybe it's Terminal that's at fault, maybe iTerm, or maybe it's just a difference in opinion. But obviously zpty does something that is regarded differently in Terminal and iTerm.

They are also asking for steps to reproduce. Would it be too big a request if I asked you for a short example to add to the bug report?

Not at all, easy to reproduce when running zsh:

1. Open a new terminal with zsh as default shell
2. Run: zmodload zsh/zpty; zpty -b test cat
3. Hit Cmd+W

I just re-remembered a realization I had on this topic a long time back when investigating: zpty is not running as a child-job to the current shell, it's simply a child process, and maybe this is where iTerm errs from Terminal. You could also hint at that zpty is a module of zsh (the current shell) and shouldn't be considered an independent process?

[mafredri]

I just re-remembered a realization I had on this topic a long time back when investigating

Yeah, I think you should go with this line of reasoning, I just created another repro:

1. Open a shell with zsh as default shell
2. Run sleep 10 &!
3. Hit Cmd+W

This also prompts for sleep, but sleep has been disowned and is completely irrelevant to the running shell.

[wedi]

Thanks! But there must be something different to the sleep because when I run sleep 10 &! in _Terminal.app_ it prompts

If you close the window, these running processes will get terminated: -zsh, cat, sleep

(My own translation from German)

BTW: CTRL-D doesn’t work in the _Terminal.app_ as well.

[wedi]

I filed this issue on the _iTerm2_ tracker:
https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues/4895

[mafredri]

Seems you are correct. So that doesn't explain the issue, and after a bit more digging I still can't figure out what the difference between a zpty process in Terminal and a disowned one is. Let's hope the issue gives us some more insight into the matter, good job on writing it up 👍 !

[mafredri]

BTW: CTRL-D doesn’t work in the _Terminal.app_ as well.

Ah, you should go into Profiles -> Shell -> When the shell exits: and select Close if the shell exited cleanly.

[wedi]

BTW: CTRL-D doesn’t work in the Terminal.app as well.
Ah, you should go into Profiles -> Shell -> When the shell exits: and select Close if the shell exited cleanly.

I have already activated that. I think it’s ZSH itself. See this screenshot:

This message appears after pressing CTRL+D in _Terminal.app_ as well as _iTerm2_. When using the logout command both close without prompting – with the pure prompt theme activated and with sleep in the background (sleep 30 &!) btw.

[mafredri]

Careful with what setopts you enable 😜.

unsetopt ignoreeof

On Wed, 6 Jul 2016, 2:02 a.m. Dirk Weise, [email protected] wrote:

BTW: CTRL-D doesn’t work in the Terminal.app as well.

Ah, you should go into Profiles -> Shell -> When the shell exits: and
select Close if the shell exited cleanly.

I have already activated that. I think it’s ZSH itself. See this
screenshot: [image: screenshot]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1466269/16602453/81755c72-4314-11e6-8a86-4c061b34cd7c.png

This message appears after pressing CTRL+D in _Terminal.app_ as well as
_iTerm2_. When using the logout command both close without prompting –
with the pure prompt theme activated and with sleep in the background (sleep
30 &!) btw.

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[wedi]

Just found the reason for that, too. :see_no_evil:

And now closing the session via CMD+W works in iTerm2 as well without any prompt. :flushed: :flushed: :see_no_evil:

That still does not explain the differences to _Terminal.app_ but at least my current annoyance is gone.

thank you so much for you help! 👍

[wedi]

It’s too late. I need to got to bed. This did not solve the issue. I just forgot I implemented a workaround. I told _iTerm2_ to ignore the processes zsh and cat when prompting:

[mafredri]

@wedi I just pushed a new commit to https://github.com/mafredri/zsh-async/commit/db5651d87c809e1c317d86a5cb1cf34b5322a9e8 that removes the need for you to include cat in the excluded process list. It would be much appreciated if you could try it out :).

Leaving the processes running always bothered me (especially cat), so I think this is an improvement!

[mafredri]

Since 1.4.0 has now been released, I'm closing this seeing as we have done everything we can to fix this issue, this release includes the updated zsh-async which removes cat from the running background processes whenever possible.

Sorry we couldn't fully fix this @wedi, let's hope for some happy news from the iTerm dev team in the near future :).