Emacs won't start when in certain paths

Emacs won't start when in certain paths

[David Reitter]

NB, this is a long-known bug.  I believe it's been diagnosed.  Has  
anything been done about it?
(The message to stderr when started manually from a terminal is  
"Cannot open load file: term/mac-win", but there is absolutely no  
error message given to an end user.)
(The patch to files.el resulting from the thread "Emacs fails to start  
properly if the current working directory is on a vfat or ntfs  
filesystem" has been installed in 22, and the problem persists.  The  
error message above indicates that this is happening much earlier  
anyways.)

This is a serious bug.  It's perfectly normal for a (non-English  
speaking) user to install Emacs in a folder such as "Développement".   
Emacs then just crashes without an indication about what's wrong.



Begin forwarded message:

> From: Luis Mota <lhrmota@gmail.com>
> Date: 3 June 2008 01:13:26 BST
> To: aquamacs-bugs@aquamacs.org
> Subject: [Aquamacs-bugs] (no subject)
>
> When the application is placed in some folder inside Applications, and
> that folder name has some unusual character (like ó), the application
> won't start.
>
>
>
> In GNU Emacs 22.1.91.2 (powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0, Carbon Version  
> 1.6.0)
>  of 2008-02-23 on applecore.inf.ed.ac.uk - Aquamacs Distribution 1.3b
> Windowing system distributor `Apple Inc.', version 10.5.2
> configured using `configure  '--without-x' '--prefix=/usr/local''
>
> Important settings:
>   value of $LC_ALL: nil
>   value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
>   value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
>   value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
>   value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
>   value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
>   value of $LC_TIME: nil
>   value of $LANG: nil
>   locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1
>   default-enable-multibyte-characters: t
>
> Major mode: Text
>
> Minor modes in effect:
>   savehist-mode: t
>   aquamacs-styles-mode: t
>   smart-frame-positioning-mode: t
>   recentf-mode: t
>   encoded-kbd-mode: t
>   osx-key-mode: t
>   show-paren-mode: t
>   delete-selection-mode: t
>   pc-selection-mode: t
>   cua-mode: t
>   tooltip-mode: t
>   mac-input-method-mode: t
>   tool-bar-mode: 0
>   mouse-wheel-mode: t
>   menu-bar-mode: t
>   file-name-shadow-mode: t
>   global-font-lock-mode: t
>   font-lock-mode: t
>   blink-cursor-mode: t
>   unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
>   utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
>   auto-compression-mode: t
>   column-number-mode: t
>   line-number-mode: t
>   transient-mark-mode: t
>
> Recent input:
> <help-echo> <menu-bar> <help-menu> <send-emacs-bug
> -report>
  

Re: Emacs won't start when in certain paths

[Stefan Monnier]

> NB, this is a long-known bug.  I believe it's been diagnosed.  Has anything
> been done about it?
> (The message to stderr when started manually from a terminal is "Cannot open
> load file: term/mac-win", but there is absolutely no  error message given to
> an end user.)
> (The patch to files.el resulting from the thread "Emacs fails to start
> properly if the current working directory is on a vfat or ntfs  filesystem"
> has been installed in 22, and the problem persists.  The  error message
> above indicates that this is happening much earlier  anyways.)

Supposedly some fixes have been installed for this in the trunk, but
since they touch some somewhat delicate points, they're not really
appropriate for the 22 branch.

> This is a serious bug.  It's perfectly normal for a (non-English speaking)
> user to install Emacs in a folder such as "Développement".   Emacs then just
> crashes without an indication about what's wrong.

For the 22 branch, for lack of a fix, we should indeed try and at least
fail cleanly and honestly.


        Stefan