Package: emacs21 Version: 21.4a+1-1 Severity: normal For about a year I had been living with Emacs hanging on startup (with a blank window) about every 1/20th time (just a guess). (This was happening on at least 3 systems that I use.) Today I couldn't take it any more and decided to look a little closer whether it's something in my startup or in Emacs itself. Considering the harmless state I reduced my .emacs to, I'd say it's the latter.
I made the following script to be able to reproduce it hanging: ------------------------- #!/bin/bash for ((i = 0; i < 1000; i++)) ; do # emacs -q -l ~/.emacs --kill ; emacs --kill ; done ------------------------- BTW, please note that running "emacs --kill" reproduces the hang (with .emacs file contents to be described below), however, the commented out "emacs -q -l ~/.emacs --kill" never ever produced a hang. The contents of my .emacs file were originally quite lengthy, but in the end got reduced to the following: ------------------------- (global-set-key "\^_" 'unset-mark) (custom-set-faces '(menu ((t (:background "gray40" :foreground "green"))))) ------------------------- The hang is occuring within a few seconds (on the only system that I've tried it on so far, it's a 3GHz P4). If I comment out the global-set-key, the hang still happens eventually, within minutes, usually. If I comment out the custom-set-faces, there would be no hang (not in the first 1000 launches that is). The problem only exists when under the X-Window system; adding -nw makes it go away. Here is my guess. It's all timing related, some kind of race condition, most likely. The commands that change the look of the Emacs frame (color change for menubar, color change on fringes, font-lock colors, taking off the toolbar (those where the kinds of customization commands in my original .emacs)) cause it to hang if they happen at some unfortunate time moment. Hitting or not hitting this time moment is influenced by what else the .emacs file asks Emacs to do before it gets to these customization commands. Somehow, this particular global-set-key command makes it really likely that the face-change comes at a bad moment (and strangely my other global-set-key commands didn't have quite the same influence, at least it seemed that way). Please, somebody fix this annoying bug. -- System Information: Debian Release: 4.0 APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.16.11 Locale: LANG=lv_LV.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=lv_LV.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Versions of packages emacs21 depends on: ii emacs21-bin-common 21.4a+1-1 The GNU Emacs editor's shared, arc ii libc6 2.3.6.ds1-7 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libice6 1:1.0.1-2 X11 Inter-Client Exchange library ii libjpeg62 6b-13 The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG ii libncurses5 5.5-5 Shared libraries for terminal hand ii libpng12-0 1.2.8rel-7 PNG library - runtime ii libsm6 1:1.0.1-3 X11 Session Management library ii libtiff4 3.8.2-6 Tag Image File Format (TIFF) libra ii libungif4g 4.1.4-4 shared library for GIF images ii libx11-6 2:1.0.3-3 X11 client-side library ii libxext6 1:1.0.1-2 X11 miscellaneous extension librar ii libxmu6 1:1.0.2-2 X11 miscellaneous utility library ii libxpm4 1:3.5.5-2 X11 pixmap library ii libxt6 1:1.0.2-2 X11 toolkit intrinsics library ii xaw3dg 1.5+E-14 Xaw3d widget set ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3-13 compression library - runtime emacs21 recommends no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
