Re: Emacs Anyone?

[Wolfgang Lux]

> Am 25.03.2017 um 09:02 schrieb Steven Nunez <steve_nunez@yahoo.com>:
> 
> Hi Guys,
> 
> Just wondering if this emacs bug ever got fixed? I'm keen to dump the Gnome 
> version that comes installed with FreeBSD and make everything I use 'native' 
> GNUStep.
> 
> Anything I can do to help, short of coding (I would if I could), but ObjC 
> isn't something I know. 

I'm afraid there's not really any trivial solution for at least NetBSD and 
OpenBSD that is not a gross hack. The problem is that the Objective-C runtime 
system expects that it's class and method tables are initialized when a program 
starts. In particular, for each compilation unit the compiler generates 
implicit calls to _objc_exec_class that makes sure the class structures and 
method dispatch tables are initialized for all classes used in that compilation 
unit. This code is added to the init section of the object file. At runtime the 
C startup code will execute all functions compiled into the init section. 
Unfortunately, in a sort of paranoia (that I generally appreciate), the NetBSD 
and OpenBSD startup code uses a flag in private memory to ensure that this code 
is executed only once. The final Emacs executable is the result of dumping the 
process with all essential modules loaded. Obviously, at that point the 
initialization code has been run and the flag is set, so when you execute the 
dumped emacs executable the initialization code is not run again. Now this 
would actually make sense if the data structures generated by the Objective-C 
runtime system were part of the dumped Emacs executable, but apparently they 
are not.

Wolfgang