Re: Emacs (today's cvs) aborts under X.

[Lute Kamstra]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> Can you see what happens if you put the older X libraries (including
> LessTif) onto Red Hat 8.0?  Does that make it work?

I tried this with the help of a kind system administrator.  The bug
does not seem to be related to the X libraries or LessTif.  On a
Redhat 8.0 system, we replaced XFree86-4.2.0 with XFree86-4.0.3 and
lesstif-0.93.18 with lesstif-0.92.0.  However, this did not make the
bug go away.

> If not, the only way to make progress is to study and debug the code
> in detail.

As I don't have to much time at the moment, I looked at it briefly.
If I understand things correctly, `abort' is called when Emacs is
trying to set up the main menubar widget.  Somewhere in the process of
creating the menubar, `make_menu_in_widget' from lwlib/lwlib-Xm.c is
called. (This is actually the first time that this function is
called.)  `abort' is called here:

,----[ lwlib/lwlib-Xm.c; line 536--542 ]
|   /* Determine whether WIDGET is a menu bar.  */
|   type = -1;
|   XtSetArg (al[0], XmNrowColumnType, &type);
|   XtGetValues (widget, al, 1);
|   if (type != XmMENU_BAR && type != XmMENU_PULLDOWN && type != XmMENU_POPUP)
|     abort ();
|   menubar_p = type == XmMENU_BAR;
`----

On the old Redhat 7.1 system, `XtGetValues' sets `type' to
`XmMENU_BAR'; on Redhat 8.0, `type' remains -1 resulting in the
`abort' call.

Incidentally, the released Emacs 21.3 works fine on my new Redhat 8.0
system.

I'm afraid this is as far as my limited understanding of the GUI
related code takes me.  Maybe you could ask an expert in this field if
he/she can reproduce the bug?

Regards,

  Lute.

-- 
Lute Kamstra  <address@hidden>
CWI  department PNA4
Room M233  phone (+31) 20 592 4214
[Echelon material: Qaddafi 22nd SAS ASLET]