the winmerge.exe process doesn't stop itself

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Thanks for the info.

There is older report about this issue:
#1602313 WinMerge stays in tasklist after closing
http://winmerge.org/bug/1602313

This is first report against 2.7/2.8 - we thought this was fixed, but apparently not. Unfortunately this is very hard to reproduce for most people, so fixing is hard also.

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Any data to how this happens would be very welcome.

Can you say if this happens only when closing WinMerge in certain way. If it for example happens only when closing WinMerge with ESC key or by selecting Exit from menu? Knowing that would be very good hint how to fix this.

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if i clic the red cross in the upper right corner of the window : the window is closed but the process is still alive
If i go in the menu "File\Exit" : the window is closed but the process is still alive

All ways have the same result ...

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Thanks, that is good to know.

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It doesn't work for me either. I'm happy to help debug this if necessary...

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2.8.4 includes workaround patch (same we added to later 2.8.x releases).

Any help is welcome with this issue. This only affects some users and we haven't been able to figure out what triggers this and none of developers have seen this issue. :(

In older item:
#1602313 WinMerge stays in tasklist after closing
http://winmerge.org/bug/1602313
Gal says it is about lost windows message, and the workaround patch seems to confirm it.

Mystery is how come the message gets lost in some user's machines. One thing to try could be to use SysInternal's process monitor to see if there are any errors or weirdness visible in it.

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I've tried the experimental 2.9.3.1 and 2.8.4 and both exhibit the problem on my machine.

I'm running XP SP3 (i think the problem occurred in SP2 as well).

I'm not sure that procmon will help. I've tried running it and filtering on winmergeu but there is nothing obvious in the logs other than the usual registry activity and temporary file stuff..

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I have installed the 2.8.4 release and the problem is still the same ...

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Thanks for the info.

So we have a major problem here. :( Increasing priority.

If the 2.8.4 didn't fix the problem, it is possible it is now different kind of problem. I have some ideas we could try and can create testing executables later this week.

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Clearing the dublicate resolution - as it looks this is different problem.

Another detail which could help - does this happen after every kind of compare? If you compare only two files, compare only two folders, or compare two folders and open two files from folder compare? I assume it is all three cases, but at least it tells it isn't specific to either file compare or folder compare views/documents.

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It happens even if i don't do a compare.

I simply open winmerge and close it using file/exit or clicking on the cross. Looking in procexp the process still remains..

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Thanks, that info helps to narrow down this. Indeed it excludes many possibilities I was thinking of.

Do you have archive support installed? Any plugins? And single-instance option from options is not set?

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i don't have archive support installed and no plugins to my knowledge. It's just a generic install. I've tried having single-instance turned on but it doens't seem to make a different, the process still doesn't die (the next time i open it another process is created)

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It is exactly the same for me.
open winmerge without displaying a comparison, close it and the process doesn't die.
no archive support installed
no plugin installed too
single-instance turned off

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Thanks again for the info. This helps to limit the possibilities. Do you have a splash screen enabled? That is a bit weird component, so its worth checking..

I'm looking into integrating extensive logging and for disabling certain things. I hope I can create some test executables in couple of days.

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nope, the splash-screen is disabled

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for me the splash screen was enabled ...
If I disable it, I have always the same problem ...

I'm not so impatient ...
I use winmerge at work but I know that I must kill processes after each comparison ...
I submitted this incident for you to resolve this problem in a future version ... (I thought it could impact other people than me)
I don't want much of a free software. It is already very usefull !

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For your information, I work in french

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nope, the splash-screen is disabled

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With Gordon's help I got log from WinMerge shutdown:

my log:
[..]
2008-06-25 20:59:40,859 TRACE MyLogger - CMainFrame::~CMainFrame() - enter
2008-06-25 20:59:40,875 TRACE MyLogger - CMainFrame::~CMainFrame() - leave
2008-06-25 20:59:40,875 TRACE MyLogger - CMainFrame::OnClose() - leave
2008-06-25 20:59:40,875 TRACE MyLogger - CMergeApp::ExitInstance() - enter
2008-06-25 20:59:40,875 TRACE MyLogger - CMergeApp::ExitInstance() - leave

Your log:
[..]
2008-06-25 18:51:53,656 TRACE MyLogger - CMainFrame::~CMainFrame() - enter
2008-06-25 18:51:53,703 TRACE MyLogger - CMainFrame::~CMainFrame() - leave
2008-06-25 18:51:53,703 TRACE MyLogger - CMainFrame::OnClose() - leave

So the code never gets into CMergeApp's ExitInstance() on affected computer.

Quick googling about "ExitInstance not called" seems to give many results so at least we now have some idea about the actual problem.

While looking at this, I found at least one problem with splash screen code and submitted a patch:
#2002738 SplashScreen PostNcDestroy does not call base class
http://winmerge.org/patch/2002738

Does not fix this problem yet.

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One thing could be testing some older WinMerge releases if there is a working version. I think 2.4.0 should be ok, but nobody has confirmed it yet. If it has problem, then try 2.2.0. If we could narrow down the release where this problem starts that could also help solving this. I can make older beta/testing releases available if somebody wants to try them.

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Ok, Gordon tested that this bug appeared between experimental versions 2.1.5.6 and 2.1.5.7.

There are 16 commits between those, most of those looking innocent. Commits are listed in wiki status page:
http://winmerge.org/Wiki/Bug_1976241