ediff problems

[Frederik Fouvry]

Symptoms:

Recently when merging directories (of C/++ files) with emerge,
the Control Buffer does not appear when files are opened for
merging:

Menu: Tools/Merge.../Directories... 
No regexp filter
=h ("no" for recursive comparison)
x

Then clicking (or typing return) on a line will start the session
to merge two files.  

Normally, it creates three windows (two for the input files and
one for the output file) and a frame with a control buffer.
Sometimes the control buffer does not appear although it's on the
buffer list (then getting out of emerge is hard, because it does
not seem to be possible to get at the buffer in a normal frame).
Once it disappeared during merging (Emerge told me to quit
immediately because I reportedly had deleted a vital buffer).

An older problem is the following:

If the file is large, and especially if there are many
differences (eg around 100), the chances of a crash are quite
big.  

Unfortunately, I have not managed to reproduce either problem in
a predictable way.


In GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
 of 2005-04-21 on cc.at.coli.uni-sb.de
Distributor `The XFree86 Project, Inc', version 11.0.40201000
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: POSIX
  value of $LC_CTYPE: en_GB.ISO8859-15
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: en_GB.ISO8859-15
  value of $LC_MONETARY: address@hidden
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: en_GB.ISO8859-15
  value of $LC_TIME: en_GB.ISO8859-15
  value of $LANG: en_GB.ISO8859-15
  locale-coding-system: iso-8859-15
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: RMAIL

Minor modes in effect:
  auto-image-file-mode: t
  desktop-save-mode: t
  global-auto-revert-mode: t
  icomplete-mode: t
  iswitchb-mode: t
  which-function-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  recentf-mode: t
  display-time-mode: t
  auto-insert-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t
  next-error-follow-minor-mode:  Fol

Recent input:
h t . <backspace> <backspace> . i n <tab> <return> 
C-s t s d b a p i <up> <down> C-x k <return> C-x k 
<return> <prior> <prior> <prior> <escape> > <escape> 
x r m a i l <return> p p p p p p d p s y p p p p <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> d p p p d 
p p p n p s y <switch-frame> <switch-frame> <help-echo> 
<escape> > <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<menu-bar> <help-menu> <report-emacs-bug>

Recent messages:
Wrote /home/HU/fouvry/mail/RMAIL
Formatting MIME message... done
Formatting MIME message... done
Formatting MIME message... done
Erase deleted messages from Rmail file? (y or n) 
Expunging deleted messages...done
Saving file /home/HU/fouvry/mail/RMAIL...
Wrote /home/HU/fouvry/mail/RMAIL
Mark set
Loading emacsbug...done