bug#8760: 24.0.50; Cannot kill emacs after killing text to kill-ring

[David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>]

On 30/05/11 08:12, Suvayu Ali wrote:
> Hi Emacs developers,
>
> After I updated Emacs today, I found a very annoying bug.
>
> If I copy/kill something to the kill-ring, I can't exit emacs with 'C-x
> C-c'. Attempting to do so results in the following backtrace:
>
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Timed out waiting for reply from
> selection owner") kill-emacs()
>    save-buffers-kill-emacs(nil)
>    save-buffers-kill-terminal(nil)
>    call-interactively(save-buffers-kill-terminal nil nil)
>

*** What desktop environment do you use, if any? (KDE, GNOME, XFCE, ...)
(and what version?)

Emacs was just expanded to communicate with a desktop environment's 
clipboard manager if available, which allows things you copy to persist 
on the clipboard after you exit emacs.

However, in your case something is going wrong, it sounds like you have 
a daemon around claiming to be a clipboard manager (because emacs is 
trying to talk to it at all) but it's acting weird (emacs getting a 
timeout trying to talk with it).

I can simulate this failure by pausing (kill -STOP/-CONT) my desktop 
environment's clipboard manager - that way, it looks like there's an 
owner of the clipboard manager selection that is unresponsive.

Arguably, emacs, if it's in the middle of exiting, could just carry on 
exiting after the selection timeout period in case it fails to interact 
with a present but uncommunicative clipboard manager, not fail to exit. 
   Then the worst that happens in case of a malfunctioning desktop 
clipboard manager is a brief pause on exit (and of course a failure to 
persist clipboard contents after exit, but, well, one can't expect that 
to work if the desktop clipboard manager isn't working).

 > I am not subscribed to the dev list

Please just be sure to keep the bug email address  (8760@debbugs...) in 
the to/cc list for this thread, then it gets archived by the bug tracker.