JabRef on OS X hangs when use Magic Wand to generate BibTeX key

[murrayE]

JabRef version3.6 on Mac OS X 10.11.6 is frequently, but not always, freezing when, after entering required fields and some optional fields, I return to Required fields and click the "Magic Wand" to try to generate a BibTeX key. Int freezes to the point that I cannot even bring up the OS X Dock.

I'm new to JabRef (please be gentle!) and so don't know where the log file is stored.

Note: I did see the discussion at http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/327128/jabref-3-6-impossible-to-generate-bibtex-keys, which is evidently for a Windows version, whereas my platform is OS X. And I see no preference allowing "automatic generation of BibTex keys when they are empty", such as is mentioned in that post.

[koppor]

@chochreiner @steimlfk Can you have a look?

Can you send us an example entry and your BibTeX key generator pattern?

[alexandre-a-denis]

I've got the same problem with exactly the same setup and it may come from this entry: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/rec/bib2/conf/ijcai/DingZLD15.bib

My pattern: [auth][year]

If I open this file directly, select the first entry, click on icon for "autogenerate BibTex keys", JabRef freezes...

[grimes2]

JabRef 3.7dev--snapshot--2016-09-13--master--952ca8e windows 10 10.0 amd64 Java 1.8.0_101

Confirmed.

EDIT: The crossref entry seems to be the problem.

[bertvv]

I have a similar (the same?) issue on Linux, JabRef 3.6, openjdk version "1.8.0_102"

What I see is that the user interface becomes unresponsive when the Bibtexkey field has the focus and a non-default key pattern (in my case [authEtAl][year]) was chosen.

[koppor]

@bertvv In any database or a certain one? Does it also happen at complex.bib?

Maybe you could generate a PR including a minimal bib (maybe with a database-local key pattern) so that we can use that as basis?

[grimes2]

JabRef 3.7dev--snapshot--2016-09-14--master--560a545 windows 10 10.0 amd64 Java 1.8.0_101

Steps to reproduce:

1. File > New Bibtex database
2. Bibtex > New entry > Article
3. author: a, year: 2000, crossref: a
4. Save database
5. Restart Jabref
6. Mark entry
7. Ctrl-G (Autogenerate Bibtexkey) (Pattern: [auth][year])
8. Freeze

[bertvv]

@koppor It happens in any BibTeX file. I reproduced the error with complex.bib, but also special-fields.bib (2 entries, author field filled out), and articlewithtitle.bib (1 entry, author field entry empty).

I've attached a full thread dump while Jabref was frozen: jabref-issue-1966-thread-dump.txt

[lenhard]

I can reproduce the bug with the instructions from @grimes2

From the thread dump by @bertvv, this looks very much like a deadlock of the event dispatch thread (Swing) and the Guava event bus. That means it might be the fault of the newly added event system (which would totally not surprise me).

@JabRef/stupro should have a look at this.

[Braunch]

@bartsch-dev asked me to test if the bug would occur on my machine. I followed the steps described in https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/1966#issuecomment-247287933 on Ubuntu, but I was not able to reproduce. It did not freeze and a key was generated.

[meneguzzi]

Autogeneration of bibtex keys seems to continue being a problem in MacOS, even if it does not crash, whenever I try to do this in more than one entry, it basically stops after one or two entries:

[meneguzzi]

Should I create a new issue for this?

[ThiloteE]

@meneguzzi a new issue would be good. JabRef 3.6 is ancient.

[koppor]

@meneguzzi You can reference this issue when creating a new one. Thus, we have some back-references. Moreover, it woiuld be nice if you could provide an example bib entry where it does not work - or is it "random" and "all" entries seem to cause issues?

[meneguzzi]

@koppor Apologies for not having followed up immediately. The file is rather large (1000+ entries), so it might have other quirks that are causing it. I hope to create a smaller one to submit with the issue. Please bear with me here.

[koppor]

No worries. For all of us this is kind of a hobby project. -- I could craft JabRef debug Versions so that bibtex keys are put in the debug log so that tracing is simpler. No need to spend time on a minimum example. I know that crafting MWEs is very hard. I once spend 10 hours only to learn that I used an older development Version of minted 🙈

[meneguzzi]

Done, if anyone has another OS to try my bibfile, please go ahead.

[koppor]

There was no new issue created. I reopen this issue and modify it to match the new input.

[meneguzzi]

So, I did create issue #9996 , and in this case, the failure is silent rather than hanging JabRef.

[Siedlerchr]

This issue was about a very old JabRef version and the follow up issue is closed already

[koppor]

@meneguzzi and @murrayE - We assume the issue is really solved. If not, please report back.

[meneguzzi]

Hi everyone, I can confirm that the problem is no longer showing up.

[meneguzzi]

Just for reference, here is one library that caused the problem, in case anyone wants to do regression. testlib.txt