Re: emacs-19.34 segfauls when built with Xfree 4.3.0 (glibc 2.3.x,gcc 3.2)

[Hin-Tak Leung]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     As it turns out, the solution (adding '-z nocombreloc' to LDFLAGS)
>     fixes problem with building current version of emacs as well.
>
> That is very strange.  The current version (21.3) contains code to use
> those options automatically--see src/s/gnu-linux.h.  Can you debug why
> this automatic mechanism failed to work for you?

Many Apologies, you are right - 21.3 does build correctly on my
system (GNU/Linux). But I also had a quick look around, and found that:

(a) the other bug report with that symptom (-nw ok, die at 
XtInitializeWidgetClass () in XFree86 4.3), filed against CVS emacs was
for x86-freebsd5.0. (oops).

(b) '-z nocombreloc' is set for gnu-linux, not for any of the other
system type or machine type. Shouldn't GNU/Hurd gets it as well,
as there is no other linker but GNU ld on GNU/Hurd?

(c) there doesn't seem to be any check for recent version (<14 months)
of GNU ld (where the precise problem is)? or indeed, the presence of
any version of GNU ld?

I believe it is possible to build gcc on freebsd (and many other
systems) '--with-gnu-ld'? How often this is done, I don't know -
it is probably not recommended to build gcc like that either. And I
have no idea which ld gcc's ./configure will pick by default if
GNU ld is somehow available in addition to the BSD one, but I
do know that if both gcc and another cc is available, emacs's
./configure picks gcc. It is possibly quite difficult to check
for exactly (c), because it is buried underneath gcc in how
it was built? Unfortunately the person who submitted that particular
bug report is no longer contactable, and there didn't seem to be
any follow up; but given he had Xfree86 4.3, his system would
have been quite recent otherwise, and it is not unthinkable that
he has a recent version of GNU ld.