Latexmk: Need to specify exactly one filename for preview-continuous mode but 6 were specified

[Th3Tr00p3r]

Hello,
I have this weird issue that has just popped out seemingly out of nowhere - I'm saying this since vimtex has worked for me in the past few days, compiling without issues using \ll. Now for some reason, when I do \ll a buffer opens showing the following:

latexmk: security risk: running with elevated privileges
Rc files read:
  NONE
Latexmk: This is Latexmk, John Collins, 29 May 2021, version: 4.74b.

Latexmk: Need to specify exactly one filename for preview-continuous mode
    but 6 were specified
Use
   latexmk -help
to get usage information
''' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
''' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

:VimtexInfo yields:

System info
  OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home (10.0.19043 N/A Build 19043)
  Vim version: NVIM v0.4.4
  Has clientserver: true
  Servername: \\.\pipe\nvim-19252-0

VimTeX project: report
  base: report.tex
  root: path
  tex: path\report.tex
  out: 
  log: 
  aux: 
  fls: 
  main parser: current file verified
  compiler: latexmk
    configuration: 
      continuous: 1
      callback: 1
      latexmk options:
        -verbose
        -file-line-error
        -synctex=1
        -interaction=nonstopmode
      latexmk engine: -pdf
    job: 15
    pid: 0
    cmd: set max_print_line=2000 & latexmk -verbose -file-line-error -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode -pdf -pvc -e "$pdf_previewer = 'SumatraPDF -reuse-instance'" -e "$success_cmd = ($success_cmd ? $success_cmd . ' & ' : '') . 'echo vimtex_compiler_callback_success'" -e "$failure_cmd = ($failure_cmd ? $failure_cmd . ' & ' : '') . 'echo vimtex_compiler_callback_failure'" "report.tex"
  viewer: General
  qf: LaTeX logfile
    addqflist: 345
    fix_paths: 346
    set_errorformat: 344
  document class: article
  packages:
    amsmath
    amssymb
    appendix
    babel
    bm
    caption
    color
    csquotes
    culmus
    epsfig
    epstopdf
    float
    gensymb
    graphicx
    hyperref
    ifpdf
    ifthen
    inputenc
    latexsym
    ragged2e
    sidecap
    textcomp

Any ideas I can test?
Thanks.

[lervag]

Yes, this seems related to a recent PR: #2076. See also #2078, then #2079. Perhaps I could ask for input/assistance from @Nicholas42 (although I understand he does not use Windows) and @yongrenjie. As I don't use Windows myself, I find it hard to address such issues.

One idea, @Nicholas42: We could revert your contribution on Windows only and keep it for unixes?

[Nicholas42]

Disabling it is the only thing I can do. It is surely some problem with windows command line escaping but I have no idea at all how to fix it and cannot test it. Added this in #2085.

[Nicholas42]

@Th3Tr00p3r If you want you can play a bit around with this line:

299363d#diff-07a99cc0464c7f037f196960bea9ad31095861d863a368c51155a67a99498556R632

and find out out what is the problem. It should be at this point but I don't know what it is.

[Th3Tr00p3r]

Hey guys, thank you so much for addressing this so quickly, and sorry for not returning the favor, I just posted this issue and went to sleep...

Using the latexmk.vim file from the commit @Nicholas42 suggested solved it for me.

Thanks a lot! I'll force myself not to upgrade the plugin for now...

[yongrenjie]

@Th3Tr00p3r: I can try to investigate this, but as of now I cannot reproduce it with a blank vimrc on gvim 8.2 / Win 10, and with this tex file:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
Hi
\end{document}

Could you also specify: (1) what vimtex-related config (if any) do you have in your vimrc or .vim/ftplugin/tex.vim files? and (2) do you have a minimal tex file for which this happens?

I'm implicitly assuming that gvim/nvim isn't the issue, but could look into that later...

[yongrenjie]

Oh dear, apparently it is an nvim issue. I can reproduce it with nvim, but not on gvim.

[clason]

Can you reproduce this on the latest nightly, then? (I use vimtex with \ll on neovim under macOS without any issues.)

[yongrenjie]

Yup, it's reproducible with the same file above on both 0.4.4 and nightly (v0.5.0-dev+1459-g384f9870f).

This one is a Windows-only issue. I just tested with nvim on my Mac and that's fine too (although I use vim8 myself).

[clason]

I see. The jobs implementation is slightly different, and Windows is always tricky -- I don't use it myself, so I can't help unfortunately.

[Nicholas42]

This function is used to build the commandline for running latexmk. Could someone post these commandlines on windows for both vim and nvim? It seems like this could be an nvim bug.

[lervag]

@Nicholas42 Disabling it is the only thing I can do. It is surely some problem with windows command line escaping but I have no idea at all how to fix it and cannot test it. Added this in #2085.

@Th3Tr00p3r Using the latexmk.vim file from the commit @Nicholas42 suggested solved it for me.

Thanks! I'm merging the PR asap as I believe it is more important that things generally work as expected. If we find a solution we can implement it afterwards.

@yongrenjie Oh dear, apparently it is an nvim issue. I can reproduce it with nvim, but not on gvim.

Thanks for investigating! The difference between neovim and Vim is the backend used for running the commands (jobstart in neovim and job_start in Vim; these behave and are implemented differently!). But VimTeX passes the same command string to the job backend in both cases:

vimtex/autoload/vimtex/compiler/latexmk.vim

Lines 452 to 455 in 299363d

	let self.cmd = self.build_cmd()
	let l:cmd = has('win32')
	\ ? 'cmd /s /c "' . self.cmd . '"'
	\ : ['sh', '-c', self.cmd]

vimtex/autoload/vimtex/compiler/latexmk.vim

Lines 534 to 537 in 299363d

	let self.cmd = self.build_cmd()
	let l:cmd = has('win32')
	\ ? 'cmd /s /c "' . self.cmd . '"'
	\ : ['sh', '-c', self.cmd]

I believe the difference may be in how the shell command is executed. It seems job_start in Vim does not run the command through the shell, whereas neovim with jobstart uses the shell if the argument is a string (see the first lines of :help jobstart). However, and again, I don't use Windows and can't really do any real testing here. So I'll leave it at this. If anyone do look into these things further and find good ideas of improving VimTeX for Windows, it will be appreciated!

[yongrenjie]

I think I've figured out the fix. I can't admit I know exactly why, but I assume it must be related to some sort of shell escaping, based on what @lervag mentioned above. With nvim the & symbol used in the perl command needs to be escaped (by preceding it with a caret ^), so the following works (tested on nvim 0.5.0, 0.4.4, and gvim 8.2 on Win10, with and without an existing $success_cmd). Obviously, this can be refactored, but I'll leave it to @Nicholas42

function! s:wrap_option_appendcmd(name, value) abort " {{{1
  if has('win32') && has('nvim')
    return ' -e "$' . a:name . ' = ($' . a:name . ' ? $' . a:name . ' . '' ^& '' : '''') . ''' . a:value . '''"'
  elseif has('win32')
    return ' -e "$' . a:name . ' = ($' . a:name . ' ? $' . a:name . ' . '' & '' : '''') . ''' . a:value . '''"'
  else
    return ' -e ''$' . a:name . ' = ($' . a:name . ' ? $' . a:name . ' . " ; " : "") . "' . a:value . '"'''
  endif
endfunction

[Nicholas42]

Ah, nice, thanks a lot! Have you tried the version with the caret on gvim? If that also works, it would be the most elegant thing to always have the escaping.