Aaron Meurer <asmeurer@gmail.com> writes:

[...]

> Final note: I use emacsclient with emacs daemon, if that might make a
> difference.  As far as version goes, I am using a very recent build
> from the development repo of emacs.

"emacsclient" is the cause.  I can reproduce this, by doing
`emacsclient -c -e '(gnus)'`, when I have no X frames open at the
time.  Sometimes can also be reproduced even when an X frame is
already there, though not always.

I think this is an ancient bug.  Noticed this at the time I began
using emacsclient.

-- 
Carl Lei (XeCycle)
Department of Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
OpenPGP public key: 7795E591
Fingerprint: 1FB6 7F1F D45D F681 C845 27F7 8D71 8EC4 7795 E591