bug#34094: 27.0.50; (wrong-type-argument stringp (require . elec-pair)) with describe-function (and other commands)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2019 19:43:00 +0100
> 
> So when I start emacs from anywhere but /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/src/,
> it'll print a lot of messages like:
> 
> Loading loadup.el (source)...
> dump mode: nil
> Using load-path (/usr/local/share/emacs/27.0.50/site-lisp 
> /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/lisp 
> /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/lisp/emacs-lisp 
> /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/lisp/progmodes 
> /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/lisp/language 
> /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/lisp/international 
> /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/lisp/textmodes /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/lisp/vc)
> Loading emacs-lisp/byte-run...
> Loading emacs-lisp/byte-run...done
> Loading emacs-lisp/backquote...
> Loading emacs-lisp/backquote...done
> ...

This part is expected, and is not a bug.

> When I start it from within /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/src/ where the
> emacs executable and emacs.pdmp exists, I get no such messages.  Then,
> however, I get a segfault for example when I start gnus.  Here's the
> xbacktrace from gdb:

This is bug, of course.

> (gdb) run
> Starting program: /home/horn/Repos/el/emacs/src/emacs 
> [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
> Using host libthread_db library "/usr/lib/libthread_db.so.1".
> [New Thread 0x7fffeea70700 (LWP 25211)]
> [Detaching after vfork from child process 25212]
> [New Thread 0x7fffee22d700 (LWP 25213)]
> [New Thread 0x7fffed2b2700 (LWP 25214)]
> [Detaching after vfork from child process 25215]
> [Detaching after vfork from child process 25216]
> [Detaching after vfork from child process 25217]
> [Detaching after vfork from child process 25218]
> [Detaching after vfork from child process 25219]

Any idea what are all those vforks about?  Is this something caused by
your init files?