bug#65559: 29.1; New Frame function fails to size the new frame correctly and prints a Gtk-CRITICAL message

bug#65559: 29.1; New Frame function fails to size the new frame correctly and prints a Gtk-CRITICAL message

[George Soler]

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Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2023 23:47:03 -0700
Message-ID: <87pm39rnh4.fsf@atlas.mail-host-address-is-not-set>
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This bug report was created from 'emacs -Q' and M-x report-emacs-bug'

After upgrading Linux to Ubuntu 23.04 the emacs create new frame function
(C-x 5 2) seems broken. What happens: when I create a new frame, it shows
up so tiny (15x7) that the GTK widget can't fit all the menu bar items and
throws the following error:

(emacs:11091): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 17:28:07.823:
gtk_distribute_natural_allocation: assertion 'extra_space >= 0' failed

This problem happens even when I run with 'emacs -Q', which could mean some
kind of basic incompatibility with gtk that may have been introduced with
the Ubuntu upgrade.
When launching emacs, the initial window displays the correct size, and the
Messages buffer is clean, the problem only happens when opening additional
frames.

I compiled emacs from source downloaded from
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html
I added no extra flags to the compilation, I just followed the vanilla
build instructions in the INSTALL file.

In GNU Emacs 29.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.37,
 cairo version 1.16.0) of 2023-08-10 built on atlas
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12201008
System Description: Ubuntu 23.04

Configured features:
CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG
LIBSELINUX MODULES NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS WEBP X11 XDBE XIM XINPUT2 XPM GTK3 ZLIB

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  global-eldoc-mode: t
  eldoc-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  electric-indent-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  indent-tabs-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message mailcap yank-media puny dired
dired-loaddefs rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg rfc6068
epg-config gnus-util text-property-search mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode
mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047
rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils time-date subr-x
cl-loaddefs cl-lib rmc iso-transl tooltip cconv eldoc paren electric
uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type elisp-mode mwheel
term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image
regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode lisp-mode
prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch easymenu
timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax font-core
term/tty-colors frame minibuffer nadvice seq simple cl-generic
indonesian philippine cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese
tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek
romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese
composite emoji-zwj charscript charprop case-table epa-hook
jka-cmpr-hook help abbrev obarray oclosure cl-preloaded button loaddefs
theme-loaddefs faces cus-face macroexp files window text-properties
overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget keymap
hashtable-print-readable backquote threads dbusbind inotify
dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting cairo
move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit xinput2 x multi-tty make-network-process
emacs)

Memory information:
((conses 16 36458 5537)
 (symbols 48 5130 0)
 (strings 32 13146 1083)
 (string-bytes 1 378191)
 (vectors 16 9457)
 (vector-slots 8 152686 14435)
 (floats 8 35 26)
 (intervals 56 200 0)
 (buffers 976 10))

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bug#65559: 29.1; New Frame function fails to size the new frame correctly and prints a Gtk-CRITICAL message

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

George Soler <gsoler415@gmail.com> writes:

> After upgrading Linux to Ubuntu 23.04 the emacs create new frame function (C-x 5 2) seems broken. What happens: when I create a
> new frame, it shows up so tiny (15x7) that the GTK widget can't fit all the menu bar items and throws the following error:
>
> (emacs:11091): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 17:28:07.823:
> gtk_distribute_natural_allocation: assertion 'extra_space >= 0' failed

This is only a symptom of the problem, not its cause.  What window
manager are you using?

bug#65559: (no subject)

[Kurt Hornik]

The problem reported by George also starting occurring with Emacs 28 on
Debian testing when this recently pulled in GNOME 44, and is also
described in

  <https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/78561/new-frame-function-fails-to-size-the-new-frame-correctly-and-prints-a-gtk-critic>
  <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/emacs/+bug/2011244>

and Dirk Eddelbuettel assures me that this is reproducible with Ubuntu
23.04 (as described above, hence with Emacs 28.2 and GNOME 44).

The problems do not occur in an FVWM session, and with the default
Debian build (debian-gtk, more below) they occur in GNOME sessions with
both Wayland and X.org.

Over the weekend I tried the effect of building Emacs 29 from the
upstream sources with various toolkit options.

As "expected", the frame size problems occur with the default

  ./configure 
  What window system should Emacs use?                    x11
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          GTK2

as well as

  ./configure --with-x-toolkit=gtk3
  What window system should Emacs use?                    x11
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          GTK3

but not with very-old-style

  ./configure --with-x-toolkit=lucid
  What window system should Emacs use?                    x11
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          LUCID

nor with very-new-style

  ./configure --with-pgtk
  What window system should Emacs use?                    pgtk
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          GTK3

So the problem seems to be with x11/GTK with GNOME 44.

FWIW, as a quick fix I tried 

(add-to-list
 'after-make-frame-functions
 '(lambda (frame) (set-frame-size frame 80 40))
 t)

but that did not work at all for me when a geometry X resource was set
(hence I stopped doing so) and even without that only unreliably, so for
now I switched to using the Debian testing emacs-lucid package (and am
waiting for the new emacs-pgtk in unstable to migrate to testing).

Best
-k