*Buffer List* column resizing for emacs >= 24.2.50.1

[Tom Roche]

How to get *Buffer List* column resizing on a recent GNU Emacs?
Why I ask:

I'm running

$ cat /etc/debian_version
> wheezy/sid
$ emacs-snapshot --version
> GNU Emacs 24.2.50.1

I work with versions of similarly-named files on several hosts
(thanks, Tramp!), using rename-buffer for sanity. This works, except
for the fixed-width *Buffer List* columns, which longer buffer names
overflow.

I tried installing Buffer Menu Plus

http://www.emacswiki.org/BufferMenuPlus

by

1. downloading buff-menu+.el from the above to a folder on my load-path
  (~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/)

2. byte-compile-file'ing buff-menu+.el

3. putting

> (require 'buff-menu+)

   in my ~/.emacs.d/init.el

4. byte-compile-file'ing init.el

5. restarting emacs

This failed with a long *Backtrace* which I unfortunately did not
record. I assumed this was due to incompatibility with later
buff-menu.el as discussed @ tail of

http://www.emacswiki.org/BufferMenuPlus

) which I attempted to solve as also discussed there: I downloaded the
buff-menu.el from emacs-23.4

$ URI=http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-23.4.tar.bz2
$ DIR="/tmp/emacs-23.4"
$ FN="$(basename ${URI%%\?*})"
$ mkdir -p ${DIR}
$ FP="${DIR}/${FN}"
$ curl -C - -o "${FP}" "${URI}"
$ pushd ${DIR}/
$ tar xf emacs-23.4.tar.bz2 
$ popd
$ pushd ${DIR}/emacs-23.4/
$  find -type f -name 'buff-menu*'
> ./lisp/buff-menu.elc
> ./lisp/buff-menu.el
$ mv ./lisp/buff-menu.el ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/

and then byte-compile-file'd ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/buff-menu.el and
~/.emacs.d/init.el , getting no errors. I then restarted emacs: no
change, same startup error in *Backtrace*.

I then tried

1. changing my init.el from

< (require 'buff-menu+)

   to

> (load (concat LOCAL-EMACS-LISP-DIR "/buff-menu.elc"))
> (load (concat LOCAL-EMACS-LISP-DIR "/buff-menu+.elc"))

2. byte-compile-file'ing init.el

3. restarting emacs

This still fails, but with a shorter error :-)

*Backtrace*
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument number-or-marker-p nil)
>   list-buffers-noselect(nil)
>   list-buffers(nil)
>   call-interactively(list-buffers nil nil)

So I'm wondering: how can I get a *Buffer List* with resizeable columns?

TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>