GNU bug report logs - #34180
27.0.50; argv[0] used incorrectly to find the .pdmp

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Message #37 received at 34180 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Daniel Colascione <dancol <at> dancol.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>, Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>,
 Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 34180 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, monnier <at> IRO.UMontreal.CA
Subject: Re: bug#34180: 27.0.50; argv[0] used incorrectly to find the .pdmp
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 13:13:18 -0700

On 10/11/21 8:10 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 10/11/21 7:02 AM, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>> It looks like find_executable from progreloc in gnulib provides a
>> portable interface for this?
> 
> It does, although it drags in a bunch of other Gnulib modules, as this 
> stuff is wildly system-dependent.
> 
> For ordinary Emacs installation, I've long thought that a better 
> approach is to store the default .pdmp file as a readonly char array 
> within the Emacs executable itself. This would be easier for installers, 
> sysadmins and users, as it would entail no funny rules about installing 
> two files, keeping them in sync, symlinks, PATH, argv[0], relative 
> names, security, etc.

It's not quite that simple though. The pdmp file includes offsets of 
data structures within the Emacs executable. Rebuilding the executable 
with a big char array will change these offsets and invalidate the pdmp 
blob you're trying to embed. Now, you could try to guess the size of the 
blob ahead of time, include a dummy embedded array of that size in 
Emacs, dump, and then overwrite the embedded array post-build, but 
there's no guarantee that doing that would actually work on all systems.

I'd rather get out of the business of mucking with executable files even 
if it means we have a bit of extra complexity arising from having to 
deal with out-of-band pdmp files.

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