Subject: Re: 23.0; Emacs.app does not load ~/.emacs

From: Yavor Doganov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:58:21 +0200

Adrian Robert wrote:
> As I posted earlier on emacs-devel, fixing CANNOT_DUMP might be as  
> simple 

I will reply to that (very informative and useful) post when I feel I
have the guts to, but:

> as adding similar zone alloc commands to unexelf.c as in  
> unexmacosx.c.

That's not possible, AFAICT.  The GNU C library has no knowledge of
zones, so it is not possible to copy the logic from unexmacosx.c to
unexelf.c just like that.

> It might be possible to use unexnext as a simpler model (kept around
> until shortly after the merge).

I don't know anything about unexnext.  I guess I can dig it out from
the SF repo; thanks for the pointer.

One possible way to solve the problem is to use NSZone functions
wrapped and callable from C.  But unexmacosx.c does some low-level
things which are not possible with NSZone.  So it is doubtful if this
approach would succeed at all.

> I think if Gurkan can (heroically) manage get the package in to
> Debian 

It doesn't depend on him, it is the Debian Emacs maintainers' call.

> it will expand the user base, and hopefully at least slightly
> improve the number actually rolling up their sleeves and trying to
> fix things.

Yes, I absolutely agree that it is up to us (GNUstep users) to solve
these problems.  But the CANNOT_DUMP problem is not a "simple problem"
so one should not expect that a mortal user can solve such a major
issue somehow, somewhen.