Flymake complains X is not available even when configured not to use X

Question

Running the Flymake mode in a text-mode console Emacs session, how can I tell Flymake to display its messages in the text console instead of trying to communicate with X?

Emacs 23 running on various environments, including Debian and Ubuntu.

I have flymake-gui-warnings-enabled set to nil, but when I flymake-display-err-menu-for-current-line it complains:

X windows are not in use or not initialized

Yes, I know that; Emacs is running across an SSH connection without X. That's why I disabled GUI use by Flymake. How can I tell Flymake not to try using the GUI, and instead to say what it has to say in the Emacs windows?

Answer 1

I've found the "tooltip" error messages plain annoying anyway so I have this in my .emacs that displays flymake error messages in the minibuffer. This is something which I got off the net somewhere. It was called flymake-cursor.el. Credit belongs to the chap who wrote it first. You don't need the pyflake bits which are specific to the Python tool I use as a flymake helper. The main function is show-fly-err-at-point which allows you to use your regular cursor to hover on a highlighted line for the message.

;; License: Gnu Public License
;;
;; Additional functionality that makes flymake error messages appear
;; in the minibuffer when point is on a line containing a flymake
;; error. This saves having to mouse over the error, which is a
;    ; keyboard user's annoyance

;;flymake-ler(file line type text &optional full-file)
(defun show-fly-err-at-point ()
  "If the cursor is sitting on a flymake error, display the
message in the minibuffer"
  (interactive)
  (let ((line-no (line-number-at-pos)))
    (dolist (elem flymake-err-info)
      (if (eq (car elem) line-no)
      (let ((err (car (second elem))))
        (message "%s" (fly-pyflake-determine-message err)))))))

(defun fly-pyflake-determine-message (err)
  "pyflake is flakey if it has compile problems, this adjusts the
message to display, so there is one ;)"
  (cond ((not (or (eq major-mode 'Python) (eq major-mode 'python-mode) t)))
    ((null (flymake-ler-file err))
     ;; normal message do your thing
     (flymake-ler-text err))
    (t ;; could not compile err
     (format "compile error, problem on line %s" (flymake-ler-line err)))))

(defadvice flymake-goto-next-error (after display-message activate compile)
  "Display the error in the mini-buffer rather than having to mouse over it"
  (show-fly-err-at-point))

(defadvice flymake-goto-prev-error (after display-message activate compile)
  "Display the error in the mini-buffer rather than having to mouse over it"
  (show-fly-err-at-point))

(defadvice flymake-mode (before post-command-stuff activate compile)
  "Add functionality to the post command hook so that if the
cursor is sitting on a flymake error the error information is
displayed in the minibuffer (rather than having to mouse over
it)"
  (set (make-local-variable 'post-command-hook)
       (cons 'show-fly-err-at-point post-command-hook))) 

Answer 2

Here's basically the answer of Noufal Ibrahim but the pyflakes part has been removed. More specifically I'm using flymake-ler-text directly to extract the text part of the error. I've only tried with epylint. Works like a charm.

;; show error in the mini buffer instead of in the menu.
;; flymake-ler(file line type text &optional full-file)
(defun show-fly-err-at-point ()
  "If the cursor is sitting on a flymake error, display the message in the minibuffer"
  (interactive)
  (let ((line-no (line-number-at-pos)))
    (dolist (elem flymake-err-info)
      (if (eq (car elem) line-no)
          (let ((err (car (second elem))))
            (message "%s" (flymake-ler-text err)))))))

(defadvice flymake-goto-next-error (after display-message activate compile)
  "Display the error in the mini-buffer rather than having to mouse over it"
  (show-fly-err-at-point))

(defadvice flymake-goto-prev-error (after display-message activate compile)
  "Display the error in the mini-buffer rather than having to mouse over it"
  (show-fly-err-at-point))

(defadvice flymake-mode (before post-command-stuff activate compile)
  "Add functionality to the post command hook so that if the
cursor is sitting on a flymake error the error information is
displayed in the minibuffer (rather than having to mouse over
it)"
  (set (make-local-variable 'post-command-hook)
       (cons 'show-fly-err-at-point post-command-hook)))