Re: [Emacs.app dev]: Emacs.app now in GNU Emacs CVS

[Yavor Doganov]

Miles Bader wrote:
> 
> FWIW, here's a little gdb session with stack backtrace... not very
> useful looking but...
> 
> [It dies even if I just run src/bootstrap-emacs without any arguments]

It fails also on gNewSense 2.0 as well with older versions of the
GNUstep (-base 1.14.1, -gui 0.12.0) libraries.

Further debugging (with GNUstep Base built with libffi, as libffcall
munges the backtrace more aggressively) shows that the fault is in
nsterm.m:

void *
ns_alloc_autorelease_pool ()
/* --------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Allocate a pool for temporary objects (callable from C)
   -------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
{
  return [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
}

This function is called in emacs.c and it appears that this is the
first ObjC function called at initialization.  Maybe there are
necessary compiler/linker flags and options that are omitted for some
reason (deliberate or not); perhaps it is related to -nostdlib and
-lgcc used in Emacs' build system (for reasons I can't fully
understand) or some other oddity.

If it would be of any help, here is how GNUstep Make compiles a random
GNUstep application on GNU/Linux:

gcc Section.m -c \
              -MMD -MP -DGNUSTEP -DGNUSTEP_BASE_LIBRARY=1 -DGNU_GUI_LIBRARY=1 
-DGNU_RUNTIME=1 -DGNUSTEP_BASE_LIBRARY=1 -D_REENTRANT -fPIC -g -Wall -DDEBUG 
-fno-omit-frame-pointer -DGSWARN -DGSDIAGNOSE -Wno-import -g 
-fno-strict-aliasing -fexceptions -fobjc-exceptions -D_NATIVE_OBJC_EXCEPTIONS 
-fgnu-runtime -fconstant-string-class=NSConstantString -I. 
-I/home/yavor/GNUstep/Library/Headers -I/usr/local/include/GNUstep 
-I/usr/include/GNUstep \
               -o obj/Section.o

Link stage:

gcc  -rdynamic      -shared-libgcc -fexceptions -fgnu-runtime -o 
HelpViewer.app/./HelpViewer \
        ./obj/main.o ./obj/mainWindowController.o ./obj/Label.o 
./obj/Controller.o ./obj/FigureCell.o ./obj/Legend.o 
./obj/HandlerStructureXLP.o ./obj/TextFormatterXLP.o ./obj/BrowserCell.o 
./obj/NoteCell.o ./obj/ModNSString.o ./obj/BRCell.o ./obj/Page.o 
./obj/Section.o      -L/home/yavor/GNUstep/Library/Libraries -L/usr/local/lib 
-L/usr/lib     -lgnustep-gui    -lgnustep-base   -lpthread -lobjc   -lm

I tried a dirty workaround by modifying src/Makefile to include the
missing flags, to no avail.

This is, IMVHO, a grave problem caused by miscompilation/linking on
GNU/Linux; but it looks rather obscure to me right now so I am sorry I
can't really help.

It is unfortunate that the Emacs.app developers run primarily Muck OS
and the code was not tested on GNUstep under GNU/Linux.  Anyway, such
failures right after the merge are more or less expected.  I'll dive
into this tomorrow, unless someone fixes the problem.

Nevertheless, it is a great day for all the GNUsteppers who are also
monks in the GNU Emacs Church -- we've been waiting for the Holy Merge
for years.  Thanks to all the people who made it happen, and of course
Adrian for keeping up with Emacs changes through the years.