Subject: Re: bug#59029: Dumping Emacs crashes when buffers have overlays

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2022 12:21:24 -0500

>> a) Drop support for dumping overlays in buffers, as if
>> `delete-all-overlays' were called for all buffers before dumping.  Fix
>> involves relaxing the abort() calls to merely print warnings.
>> 
>> b) Restore support, and test it.
>
> a) could be a short-term band-aid, but if we want ever to support
> re-dumping, b) is a must.

FWIW, I suspect that the vast majority of redumping uses will/would be
to include more preloaded ELisp code rather than to include
pre-populated buffers, so it's quite likely that it would work just fine
without that extra support for dumping overlays-in-buffers.

But I agree that (b) is a must, because I find it sad if we can't get
the pdumping code working.

>> For (b) I'm not keen on wiring up a single-purpose test under test/*
>> somewhere just to test pdumping with overlays.  How about hooking in to
>> loadup.el to populate a dummy buffer with overlays before dumping?
> For testing purposes, you could perhaps use eval-after-load to do
> something after loading loadup.el?

IMO, we should have a proper separate pdump test, instead.

        Stefan