Re: 23.0.60; Seg fault in xfaces.c at line 6703 (Emacs.app on GNUstep)

[Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>]

Chris Hall wrote:
> On 2008-02-03 10:52:46 -1000 Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> If it is a bug to have 0 in that field, why would you hide the bug by 
>> avoiding a crash when it is 0?
>
> So it could terminate gracefully while reporting that it had a 0 in 
> that field, along with any other available information that might 
> prove useful in helping to solve the problem?  Maybe offer to run in 
> text mode with that information made available in a buffer with a bug 
> report?
>
> I didn't mention anything about 'hiding' it, did I?
>
> With the patch I supplied, at least the user knows there is an issue 
> with realizing the default face, rather than SIGSEGV (11).
Since this is a programming error in an internal structure, in a 
development version of the code, it is letting the developer know there 
is an error. Developers have debuggers, they don't need code to catch 
bugs and exit gracefully. To write code to catch every potential NULL 
pointer exception in the internal structures would make Emacs bloated 
and slow.