Just give it some time. Go for a walk.
I’ve been programming a Desktop App that launches some shell scripts. The intention is to avoid having non-technical users (those for which the only interaction with the computer is through a mouse or a touch screen, and think keyboards / terminals are a waste of resources) messing around with a terminal. I want them to launch (a python streamlit app that uses a sqlite3 db and a crawler that feeds that same db).
Well, I decided to write this app in Racket, and this is pretty forward to do: just create a bunch of buttons, when the user clicks one, launch a subprocess, and pipe the results into an editor-canvas% area. Simple right?
Something was not working with my scripts. I double checked everything and it all seemed ok. But I added a set -xe for good measure. I forced a change into the current directory, for good measure, with cd "$(dirname "$0")". But still nothing was working. The error was cryptic and something wasn’t good with the piping. I read the Racket documentation (a very good and well organised documentation. Wish more projects had such docs.) for clues. But nothing. Nada, zero, zips, game over.
When you’re stuck, sometimes1 it is just better to leave in Bain-marie2 and come back to it latter. I did that. First thing this morning the error was so obvious and fixed with 5 keystrokes. Yesterday I was was fully focused on my test scripts. The problem was that subprocess (a shell) requires the full path of the command. A simple 5 strokes /bin/ at the head of zsh solved it.
Sometimes, our brain is so focused on highly complex things that it can’t see the obvious mistakes. We have to accept our failures gently, don’t be too harsh, and stay positive. Let the brain wonder to other things where it can de-focus from the problem. It will help it solve the hidden-in-plain-sight issues quickly if we give it time.