In emacs from git the faces that are created in the .emacs receive bad face-ids - in particular, the first one gets face-id 0, which is the same as the face-id for the "default" face. I discovered this bug because the first face that my .emacs creates is used to make "^O"s be displayed as red stars, and in git emacs these red stars were not being displayed in red. The shell script below creates an elisp file - with some code in its comments meant be executed by hand - and loads and edits that elisp file from both emacs24 and emacs-27.0.50 with "-Q" to show the (bad) behaviour that I was getting from my .emacs. The relevant part of the M-x report-emacs-bug buffer is: In GNU Emacs 27.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.18.9) of 2019-01-22 built on libreboot-ThinkPad-T400 Repository revision: fd943124439b7644392919bca8bc2a77e6316d92 Repository branch: master Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11804000 System Description: Trisquel GNU/Linux Flidas (8.0) Cheers, Eduardo Ochs http://angg.twu.net/#eev --snip--snip-- cat > /tmp/face-id-bug.el <<'%%%' ;; A test file for the face id bug. ;; How to use this: run ;; emacs24 -Q -l /tmp/face-id-bug.el /tmp/face-id-bug.el ;; emacs27.0.50 -Q -l /tmp/face-id-bug.el /tmp/face-id-bug.el ;; and in each case execute the sexps in comments below. (defface my-face-red '((t (:foreground "red"))) "Face used for the red star glyph (char 15).") (defface my-face-green '((t (:foreground "green"))) "Face used for the green bang glyph (char 16).") (defun my-set-glyph (pos char face) (aset standard-display-table pos (vector (make-glyph-code char face)))) (if (not standard-display-table) (setq standard-display-table (make-display-table))) (my-set-glyph ?\^O ?* 'my-face-red) (my-set-glyph ?\^P ?! 'my-face-green) ;; Here's how to see the bug. Run this with C-x C-e: ;; (insert 10 15 16) ;; it will insert a newline, a char 15 - displayed as a red star ;; glyph - and a char 16 - displayed as a green bang glyph. ;; ;; PROBLEM: in Emacs 24 both glyphs display as expected; in Emacs from ;; git - at least on 2019jan27 - the red star glyph appears as a star ;; in the default face, that is not red. ;; ;; A GUESS: this MAY be related to how emacs attributes face-ids to ;; newly-create faces. In Emacs 24 all these face-ids are different: ;; (face-id 'default) ;; (face-id 'my-face-red) ;; (face-id 'my-face-green) ;; and in git Emacs the first two are zero - which means that ;; (make-glyph-code ?* 'my-face-red) ;; (make-glyph-code ?* 'default) ;; are indistinguishable. %%% emacs24 -Q -l /tmp/face-id-bug.el /tmp/face-id-bug.el emacs-27.0.50 -Q -l /tmp/face-id-bug.el /tmp/face-id-bug.el