`describe-char` doesn't work outside of evail unless `(ad-deactivate #'describe-char)` is evaluated about evil HOT 5 CLOSED

Thanks for the bug report @flexibeast . Could you provide some repro instructions? Specifically in a make emacs session (check out evil's Makefile for more details) if possible. Evil isn't easy to get "outside" of once activated, so want to make sure I'm doing the same thing you're doing when trying to repro.

from evil.

.... dang. It works in the Emacs instance opened via make emacs. (And 224/225 tests passed, with one skipped: evil-test-jump-buffers).

i'm actually not surprised; i've suspected the issue is something specific to my setup, as it's the sort of thing that other users would probably be reporting otherwise. But i've not had any good ideas about how to approach this. i have ~180 packages installed, and my config is a literate Org file that, once tangled, is nearly 3000 lines long, but many packages aren't specifically configured beyond their defaults. So i'm not sure whether bisection would work ....

By "outside of evil" i meant: i don't have evil enabled globally, and usually only enable it per-buffer via evil-local-mode.

Here's the entirety of evil-related stuff in my config:

[excerpt from the value assigned to `mode-line-format`:]
'(:eval
  (if evil-state
      " (v)"))
...
(define-key personal-global-map (kbd "e") #'evil-local-mode-y-or-n)
...
(require 'evil)

(setq evil-emacs-state-cursor '("red" box))
(setq evil-normal-state-cursor '("green" box))
(setq evil-visual-state-cursor '("orange" box))
(setq evil-insert-state-cursor '("red" bar))
(setq evil-replace-state-cursor '("red" bar))
(setq evil-operator-state-cursor '("red" hollow))

;; KLUDGE:
;; Remove all advice on `describe-char', including the advice added by
;; evil-integration.el, to get `describe-char' working again.
(ad-deactivate #'describe-char)
...
(defun evil-local-mode-y-or-n ()
  (interactive)
  (if (member 'evil-local-mode local-minor-modes)
      (evil-local-mode -1)
    (if (y-or-n-p "Enable evil-local-mode?")
        (evil-local-mode))))

evil-local-mode-y-or-n is there because i found myself accidentally invoking the binding for evil-local-mode in personal-global-map, not realising i'd done so, and was then confused as to what was happening in responses to my keyboard inputs. :-P

from evil.

I still can't reproduce this error, having tried running emacs like so:

emacs -Q -L . -l evil.el

and manually enabling and disabling evil-local-mode in various buffers, describe-char still works in both instances. I'll close this issue for now, but please feel free to reopen if you can provide repro instructions in such a limited environment. If you're not aware, it looks like org-babel-tangle is an option for extracting the source code from a literate config. Maybe worth a try if bisection is tricky as is.

from evil.

Yeah, my config gets tangled at each startup, so i did a bisect-and-restart thing.

Embarrassingly, it turned out that a while back, for reasons i now can't remember, i'd put a couple of lines in a separate file i have for ELisp dev purposes, which i load from my main config file:

(debug-on-entry #'evil-mode)
(debug-on-entry #'evil-local-mode)

Commenting out those lines has resulted in things working again.

Sorry for the noise, and for wasting your time!

from evil.

No problem, glad it's sorted!

from evil.