cmder: [Bug] Got ERROR: Clink initilization has failed with error code: 0 at every start of Cmder since v1.3.21

@DRSDavidSoft Clink v1.4.6 was just published and includes returning exit code 2 from clink inject when a fatal error occurs.

Please change the if errorlevel 1 to if errorlevel 2. That way with an updated Clink, the Cmder error message will work as intended, and with older Clink then Cmder will avoid reporting a bogus error.

And there’s little point in showing the %errorlevel% in the error message, since it will always be the same value; it is not an error code that can be looked up anywhere for diagnostic purposes, it is simply a “yes/no” value. So, please remove the %errorlevel% mentioned in the error message.

(That way you can sidestep needing to restructure the code to report the actual errorlevel – since the way it’s currently written it prints whatever %errorlevel% was at line 168, which is completely unrelated to the error at line 201. This is because of how variable expansion works in parenthesis groupings. For more info, refer to “Delayed Expansion” for cmd.exe.)

Good evening

Just some maybe important informations:

• Maybe it is worth changing from .bat to .cmd. .bat still works on the basis of 16bit MS-DOS with command.com. Actually, it is a miracle that it still works 😄

• Additionally, .bat handles ErrorLevel differently: .bat sets ErrorLevel only in case of errors. (Source: StackOverflow)

If you absolutely want to stay with .bat, then please work that way:

Old:

  if errorlevel 1 (
    … 

New:

  IF %errorlevel% GEQ 1 ( 
    … 

The new solution compares the real int value. If errorlevel is missing because of the way .cmd handles it, then it still works 😄

Thanks a lot, kind regards, Thomas

🔥 This issue will be fixed soon, I apologize to everyone for taking too long to work on it.

@DRSDavidSoft I see the root causes for the two problems:

1. The error level is mistakenly reported as 0.

This happens because line 201 is inside a block that started on line 168.

All environment variables within a block are expanded when the block starts.

So line 201 gets expanded with whatever %errorlevel% was at the moment line 168 was executed, not at the moment when line 201 was executed. The inject happens after line 168, so the errorlevel from it is not what gets shown.

2. Cmder reports that Clink failed to initialize.

This is due to new code that was added to init.bat, and the new code is incorrect.

On 2022/10/18 commit 9399cbdcd7f2b787938946de95b2e07e417fbc9d added the line.

The intent was to find when Clink isn’t loaded. But the implementation was to find when Clink inject fails. They aren’t equivalent.

The init.bat script assumes that a failed inject means Clink isn’t loaded. But if Clink is installed for autorun, then by the time Cmder tries to inject Clink it is already loaded and initialized. So the inject fails, but Clink is in fact successfully initialized.

The short term fix is to delete the code that attempts to detect failure to initialize. There isn’t a good long term fix at this time.

@DRSDavidSoft TIL what IRL means! 😃

Thanks for the thorough investigation, I’ll work on the short-term fix.

@chrisant996 Is it possible for Clink to either report a known error level if it’s already injected, or set an environment variable like CLINK_INJECTED so that we can detect and bypass re-loading it?

Update: Added commit 9e55c4820006b15d91744e5b6f52c69782db084c to hopefully mitigate this issue.

@BackSpace54 Can you please:

1. Open init.bat in your current installation, and remove line 200, 201 and 202.
2. Open Cmder.exe and type set CMDER_ROOT to verify that the path to Cmder root is valid.
3. Enter this:

curl "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cmderdev/cmder/master/vendor/init.bat" > "%CMDER_ROOT%\vendor\init.bat"

1. Exit all Cmder Windows, and re-open a Cmder.exe window

Please check if this fixes the issue. Thanks.

@chrisant996 If it’s impossible or hard to implement something to tell if Clink is already injected, I’ll change the error to a warning, so the execution steps are not stopped on such a failure, and maybe the plain cmd.exe PATH is used. If clink is indeed already loaded, this won’t have an effect but displaying a warning message.

BTW is there anything else that you would suggest might need edits, or any additions in init.bat to bring it in par with the scripts in the clink repository? I haven’t had time to look at the official Clink loader scripts, so I’d appreciate your feedback.