Cannot open file

[chrt]

I am using Emacs 27.2 and gawk 5.0.0 in Windows.

I failed to review the demo, and the error messages were as follows:

helm-M-x-execute-command: Org-fc shell error: Cannot find file - -L
Cannot find file - -NAME
Cannot find file - -NOT
Cannot find file - -NAME
Access denied - .GIT
Cannot find file - -PRINT0
(
  (:path "
---------- CHANGELOG.ORG

---------- DEMO.ORG

---------- .BUILD.YML

---------- .GITIGNORE
" :cards (
gawk: c:/Users/username/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/src/org-fc/awk/index.awk:65: fatal: cannot open file `
---------- CHANGELOG.ORG

---------- DEMO.ORG

---------- .BUILD.YML

---------- .GITIGNORE
' for reading (No such file or directory)

My .emacs.d/init.el is as follows:

(add-to-list 'load-path "c:/Users/username/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/src/org-fc/")

;; org-fc
(require 'org-fc)
(require 'org-fc-hydra)
(setq org-fc-directories "d:/Notes")

I tried to review my own cards, but the result is similar.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[l3kn]

How did you set up the find command on windows? Maybe it doesn't support the -L flag and gets confused.

[nv2p]

I use emacs 28 native-comp in MSYS2 and ran into the same issue. I can confirm that for me the problem was with find in windows. Adding a setq find-program [msys2 or git path] in my init file, as usually suggested, didn't work for me. "C:\Windows\System32\find.exe" is first in the path if I type where find in eshell and I didn't find how to remove it, only how to add others, which doesn't solve the problem.

So I went for the more radical, but working solution (also in Powershell) of replacing the find.exe in "C:\Windows\System32\" with the one from "C:\msys64\usr\bin\". I kept the old file in case, but so far so good. You need to change the permissions for this operation (see here how to gain full control, but I suggest only applying this to the file, not the whole folder, and putting things back after ;)).

[l3kn]

I don't have a windows installation to test this on but it seems like the problem could also be solved by explicitly telling org-fc which version of find to use.

Invoking find is handled through the org-fc-awk--find function. A fix might be to overwrite it like this:

(defun org-fc-awk--find (paths)
  (format
   "C:\mysys64\usr\bin\find -L %s -name \"*.org\" -not -name \".*\" -print0"
   (mapconcat
    (lambda (path) (shell-quote-argument (expand-file-name path)))
    paths " ")))

The exact path depends on how and where a compatible find was installed. If this works, I can add configuration variables for the paths of the find and gawk programs.

Maybe we can also put together a list of paths to use for different installation methods. Is there also a 32bit version of MYSYS2 with a path of mysys32\usr\bin? And are there other common methods for installing unix tools on windows?

[nv2p]

To be clear, from my point of view, this issue is solved (but can't close myself). It's nice from you to give an ad-hoc fix, but I think it's a more general problem, which has actually nothing to do with org-fc itself. So I think you shouldn't waste time with a list of path or any else. There are many answers on that on SO (like my link above) or other places. That's also why I prefer a global fix to it, as I proposed, cause it's anyway a problem for me if find is unusable in eshell, for instance.

To answer your last question, there are 3 main ways of getting unix tools on Windows to my knowledge (I don't count virtualization, like WSL) :

1. msys2, which has the advantage to be extensible, cause it's like a (limited) mini-linux in windows
2. git for windows, which is kind of a customized mini-msys2, for this specific purpose, and contain several classic unix tools
3. find the executables and add them manually.