Subject: bug#11913: Unusual Emacs 24.1 arithmetic error (abs) on i386 machine

From: Rob Browning <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:02:16 -0500

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

> Do we even understand how this error happens?  There's nothing even
> close to a reference to 'abs' on that line of cal-hebrew.el in my copy
> of Emacs 24.1.

Right.  While I'm not extremely knowledgeable about the process, since
that string is associated with Qarith_error (in data.c), I assumed it
was probably some code deeper down raising the exception (from either
data.c or floatfns.c).  Given the fact that it only happens on i386, I
also wondered if x87 issues might be involved -- but the fact that it
only happens on *this* i386 machine (and a couple of others) suggests
the software versions matter.

In any case, if we can come up with some suitable diagnostic process, I
can ask the buildd maintainers to attempt it, but since I'm sure there
time is a limited resource, I wanted to consult all of you in an attempt
to test more efficiently.

Thanks
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
GPG as of 2002-11-03 14DD 432F AE39 534D B592 F9A0 25C8 D377 8C7E 73A4