[Openmcl-devel] ...the sky is falling

[Gary Byers]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, Joakim Sandgren wrote:

> here is one console :sincerely
> joakim
>

Thanks.  I haven't been able to reproduce this, but can convince myself
that a bug that I did find could have led to this error.  Could you please
update to r13585 (in the trunk), rebuild the IDE, and let me know if this
problem persists ?

I think that the combination of factors that might lead to the bug is:

  - the definition you're looking for isn't at its recorded position in
    the file/buffer, either because the file/buffer has been edited since
    the function was defined or because that position is a byte offset (not
    a character offset) and the file is encoded in a variable-length encoding
    (like UTF-8).  (I don't remember if the latter possibility is a factor;
    Gail might know offhand.)  In this case, M-. has to search for the
    definition.

  - a data structure used to perform that search was initialized incorrectly
    if the length of the search string (the recorded source of the definition)
    was greater than the largest CHAR-CODE of the characters in that search
    string.  (In other words, it was completely bogus.)

That (mis-)initialization is definitely a bug, and it would have led to the
same symptom that showed up in the backtrace.

When reporting a bug, it's much, much better to send a backtrace (even if
it turns out to be unnecessary) than to not send one (if it does turn out
to be necessary.)  r13585 fixes -a- bug (and it's quite possible that it's
the one that's affected you), and it wouldn't have been possible to even
know where to look without the backtrace.