bug#6179: OSX: Emacs.app is loading files specified by relative pathname twice

[Roy Liu]

Package: emacs

Version: 23.2

I've noticed strange loading behavior for Emacs.app when I wrap it with a script:

#!/bin/bash

/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$@"

Here are my observations:

1) For files specified with --find-file and --find and --visit, loading goes fine.

2) For files specified with absolute paths, loading is also fine.

3) For files specified with relative pathnames, things start getting weird.  For example, loading "a/b/c/d.txt" will load the desired file, but it will then try to load "a/b/c/a/b/c/d.txt", which clearly doesn't exist.  It's as if directory "a/b/c" has been added to some sort of search path (in addition to $PWD) in which emacs then relatively searches for "a/b/c/d.txt", thus resulting in the joined result "a/b/c/a/b/c/d.txt".

I don't know if this should be a bug, since the desired usage of Emacs.app is to run through the window manager (some form of "open"), which is a sheltered environment.

I've built Emacs.app from MacPorts, which, from what I can tell, introduces no special modifications or patches, and so I believe that this defect is repeatable.

-Roy