Very nice! I am truly amazed at how quickly you went right to the source of the problem, given the fact you said you haven't looked at the code for a while. Looks like I was barking up the wrong tree so to speak. I saw the symptom, but was nowhere near identifying the root cause. Thanks for fixing this. Will look for the patch after the archive updates tonight (I'm not on xemacs-patches list). Thanks again, Troy -----Original Message----- From: Olivier Galibert [mailto:galibert＠pobox.com] Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 12:24 AM To: Troy Noble Cc: 'xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org' Subject: Re: Who is the portable dumper expert? 21.2.37 Portable dumper s till broken. On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 03:25:24PM -0700, Troy Noble wrote: never knows gets nil) indent_tabs_mode" Ah grasshopper, if it was that easy :-) pdump_reorganize_hash_table is a red herring. It exists only because most hashcodes are computed from the actual addresses of the objects, and since said addresses change depending on where the dump file was loaded they have to be reorganized according to the new hashcodes. So the question is, is the opaque dumped? If you look at symeval.h you can see: #define DEFVAR_BOOL(lname, c_location) \ DEFVAR_SYMVAL_FWD_INT (lname, c_location, SYMVAL_BOOLEAN_FORWARD, 0) #define DEFVAR_SYMVAL_FWD_INT(lname, c_location, forward_type, magicfun) do{ \ DEFVAR_SYMVAL_FWD (lname, c_location, forward_type, magicfun); \ dumpopaque (c_location, sizeof(int)); \ } while (0) If you look at what dumpopaque does, you can see that it does what's expected. I can even tell you that it does it correctly (I checked, and anyway all C-accessible variables would explode if is wasn't working, so it can't be that bad. I mean, XEmacs would not start at all). So The Truth is Somewhere Else(c)(r)(tm). You found (thanks, that's exactly the starting point needed) a discrepancy of behaviour in the C code between pdump and normal. If you check a bit deeper you can see that is the pdump case the code never goes near the case SYMVAL_BOOLEAN_FORWARD: for the symbol indent-tabs-mode. So let's fish out the symbol and compare between pdump and normal: With --pdump: In *scratch* "(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)^C" Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt. 0x403c815e in __select () from /lib/libc.so.6 (gdb) break oblookup Breakpoint 1 at 0x82001ce: file /home/galibert/xemacs/xemacs-21.2/src/symbols.c, line 348. (gdb) cond 1 size==16 (gdb) cont Continuing. In *scratch* "^J" (aka, execute line) Breakpoint 1, oblookup (obarray=1079809524, ptr=0x85dc1ac "indent-tabs-mode", size=16) at /home/galibert/xemacs/xemacs-21.2/src/symbols.c:348 (gdb) finish Run till exit from #0 oblookup (obarray=1079809524, ptr=0x85dc1ac "indent-tabs-mode", size=16) at /home/galibert/xemacs/xemacs-21.2/src/symbols.c:348 0x81ffc90 in Fintern (string=139009716, obarray=1079809524) at /home/galibert/xemacs/xemacs-21.2/src/symbols.c:216 216 object = oblookup (obarray, XSTRING_DATA (string), len); Value returned is $1 = 1078992296 (gdb) pobj $1 $2 = (Lisp_Symbol *) 0x40501da8 $3 = {lheader = {type = 4, mark = 0, c_readonly = 0, lisp_readonly = 0}, next = 0x0, name = 0x404837a0, value = 1079230256, function = 1078786304, plist = 1079592596} Symbol name: indent-tabs-mode (gdb) pobj $2->value $4 = (struct symbol_value_buffer_local *) 0x4053bf30 $5 = {magic = {lcheader = {lheader = {type = 3, mark = 0, c_readonly = 0, lisp_readonly = 0}, next = 0x857f7c0, uid = 7892, free = 0}, value = 0x2, type = SYMVAL_BUFFER_LOCAL}, default_value = 1079009624, current_value = 1079010440, current_buffer = 1079010440, current_alist_element = 1079010440} (gdb) pobj $4->default_value $6 = (Lisp_Symbol *) 0x40506158 $7 = {lheader = {type = 4, mark = 0, c_readonly = 0, lisp_readonly = 0}, next = 0x0, name = 0x40487410, value = 1079009624, function = 1078786304, plist = 1079010440} Symbol name: t (gdb) pobj $4->current_value $8 = (Lisp_Symbol *) 0x40506488 $9 = {lheader = {type = 4, mark = 0, c_readonly = 0, lisp_readonly = 0}, next = 0x0, name = 0x404876d0, value = 1079010440, function = 1078786304, plist = 1079010440} Symbol name: nil Hum hum, so the symbol is in fact a buffer local one. And there is no sign of SYMVAL_BOOLEAN_FORWARD anywhere. Ok, let's try without pdump: (gdb) pobj $4->default_value $6 = (Lisp_Symbol *) 0x832bc4c $7 = {lheader = {type = 4, mark = 0, c_readonly = 0, lisp_readonly = 0}, next = 0x0, name = 0x832b44c, value = 137542732, function = 137166796, plist = 137542708} Symbol name: t (gdb) pobj $4->current_value $8 = (struct symbol_value_forward *) 0x82b2d58 $9 = {magic = {lcheader = {lheader = {type = 0, mark = 1, c_readonly = 1, lisp_readonly = 1}, next = 0x0, uid = 0, free = 0}, value = 0x8306c1c, type = SYMVAL_BOOLEAN_FORWARD}, magicfun = 0} We have a winner. The symbol is hosed. Time to have a look at the struct symbol_value_buffer_local declaration and its description. Just go in symeval.h and read it. I obviously didn't have my brain engaged when I read it a long time ago, given what I wrote as a description: static const struct lrecord_description symbol_value_buffer_local_description[] = { { XD_LISP_OBJECT, offsetof (struct symbol_value_buffer_local, default_value) }, { XD_LO_RESET_NIL, offsetof (struct symbol_value_buffer_local, current_value), 3 }, { XD_END } }; Putting current_value systematically to Qnil? Yeah right. Once the bug found, it was a Simple Matter Of Programming ;-) The bugfix is in xemacs-patches. OG. PS: Don't worry, it's just that the portable dumper has reached a level of stability good enough that bugs are at least that perverted.