bug#46607: 25.2; Emacs hangs with Error running timer 'blink-cursor-start'

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On 19/02/2021 12:40, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> writes:
> 
>>>    (let* ((time t1) (high (car-safe (prog
>>>    time-add(nil 10)
> 
> OK, so your `time-add' is definitely an Emacs Lisp function.  But:
> 
>> It says
>>
>>> time-add is a built-in function in ‘C source code’.
>>> (time-add A B)
> 
> Your Emacs claims that `time-add' is a built-in C function.  So something
> is very odd here.

I rely on your knowledge here.

> And:
> 
>> On a bare-bones Mint 19 with no .emacs and using emacs -Q (capital Q)
>> the *messages* buffer contains:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Checking for load-path shadows...
>>> Checking 255 files in /usr/share/emacs/25.2/lisp...
>>> Checking 41 files in /usr/share/emacs/25.2/lisp/vc...
>>> Checking 33 files in /usr/share/emacs/25.2/lisp/url...
> 
> Your Emacs is issuing some messages that Emacs do not normally do on
> loadup -- even with an "emacs -Q", which should be impossible.

Aha. I was certainly puzzled that there were messages when using -Q

> I can only guess at what's going on, but the most likely explanation for
> these very strange behaviours is that the people who have packed up your
> Emacs version (in Mint 19) have done some highly non-standard things.
> So you should perhaps report this as a bug with the Mint people instead.

Who typically packages debs for a distro: Emacs people doing it for 
their fav distro, or distro people doing it cos they want Emacs?

I'm baffled that the entire Emacs-using community on Mint (or perhaps 
that should be the Mint-using community of Emacs users) hasn't found 
this and lodged a bug report.

And there was that additional comment on the emacs.se site from a Mac 
user who got the identical messages.

I'm going to try some other distros from USB and see what their emacsen 
do. The Emacs on other platforms exhibits the same bug, I'll be back :-)

Thanks for all your help.

Peter