I've reported at the end of July the problem to the egcs folks but didn't get an answer (but didn't really expect one since my report was much to vague). At that time I used egcs-2.91.51 19980714 to compile XEmacs-21.0-pre7 on my system (Linux 2.1.108 on i486 with glibc 2.0.94). With -O3 and -O1 I got the following failure: EMACSBOOTSTRAPLOADPATH="/mnt/xemacs/cvs-sources/xemacs-20/src/../lisp/:/mnt/xemacs/build-test" \ ./temacs -batch -l /mnt/xemacs/cvs-sources/xemacs-20/src/../lisp/update-elc.el Fatal error: assertion failed, file /mnt/xemacs/cvs-sources/xemacs-20/src/bufslots.h, line 36, abort() Compiling with older egcs versions didn't show that bug. After some more investigating I think the bug is somehow related to XEmacs's use of --use-union-type. Compiling with --use-union-type I manage to compile a working XEmacs 21.0 pre release. I haven't checked if current egcs and current XEmacs 21.0 compile cleanly with --use-union-type and the rest of the flags I normaly use. Btw. I just build the current XEmacs version with egcs 1.1 and it works for me (I've appended my installation file). I do think that egcs is somehow broken but don't have enough time to find out if this is true and to localize the bug. :-( Andreas uname -a: Linux arthur 2.1.113 #115 Tue Aug 25 10:10:49 CEST 1998 i486 unknown /mnt/xemacs/cvs-sources/xemacs-20/configure '--compiler=/opt/egcs/bin/gcc' '--cflags=-pipe -O3 -fno-exceptions -g -Wall -Wno-switch' '--prefix=/usr' '--package-path=~/.xemacs:/usr/lib/xemacs/packages:/usr/lib/xemacs/mule-packages' '--extra-verbose=no' '--with-site-lisp' '--const-is-losing=no' '--srcdir=/mnt/xemacs/cvs-sources/xemacs-20' '--with-gnu-make' '--with-database=no' '--error-checking=none' '--debug=no' '--mail-locking=flock' '--with-gpm=no' '--with-offix=no' '--with-menubars=lucid' '--with-scrollbars=lucid' '--with-dialogs=athena' '--with-mule' XEmacs 21.0 "Norwegian" configured for `i486-pc-linux'. Where should the build process find the source code? /mnt/xemacs/cvs-sources/xemacs-20 What installation prefix should install use? /usr What operating system and machine description files should XEmacs use? `s/linux.h' and `m/intel386.h' What compiler should XEmacs be built with? /opt/egcs/bin/gcc -pipe -O3 -fno-exceptions -g -Wall -Wno-switch Should XEmacs use the GNU version of malloc? yes (Using Doug Lea's new malloc from the GNU C Library.) Should XEmacs use the relocating allocator for buffers? yes What window system should XEmacs use? x11 Where do we find X Windows header files? /usr/X11R6/include Where do we find X Windows libraries? /usr/X11R6/lib Compiling in support for XAUTH. Compiling in support for XPM images. Compiling in support for PNG image handling. Compiling in support for (builtin) GIF image handling. Compiling in support for JPEG image handling. Compiling in support for TIFF image handling. Compiling in support for X-Face message headers. Compiling in native sound support. Compiling in support for ncurses. Compiling in Mule (multi-lingual) support. Compiling in XIM (X11R5+ I18N input method) support. Using raw Xlib to provide XIM support. Compiling in support for proper session-management. Using Lucid menubars. Using Lucid scrollbars. Using Athena dialog boxes. Compiling in DLL support. movemail will use "flock" for locking mail spool files. Using Lisp_Objects with minimal tagbits. -- Andreas Jaeger aj(a)arthur.rhein-neckar.de jaeger(a)informatik.uni-kl.de for pgp-key finger ajaeger(a)aixd1.rhrk.uni-kl.de