I'm writing to see if you have tried to compile Emacs lately. I want to compile emacs-25.1 but hit a segmentation fault. If you wonder why I want to compile, or why I'm asking here, read on...
I upgraded to Ubuntu 16.10 today and emacs-24.5 still runs, but the toolbar icons have turned invisible. After a suitable amount of googling, I found this problem has appeared through time, usually either a flaw in gtk+, the desktop theme, or Emacs itself. The most recent posts seem to say that there was a bug in the Emacs code that was since fixed (https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/48862).
I figured I'd try emacs25, see if it is fixed there. Many people suggest using the repo offered here, (deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/adrozdoff/emacs/ubuntu yakkety main), however that one is refused by apt-get for a reason I have not seen before:
W: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/adrozdoff/emacs/ubuntu yakkety Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
I don't mind compiling programs, so I'll move forward.
My first idea was to take the source deb packaging from that website but trying to build the package resulted in a segmentation fault.
Supposing that there was something wrong in that packaging, I tried to build from source. I end in the same segmentation fault:
$ wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-25.1.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf emacs-25.1.tar.gz
$ cd emacs-25.1
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
$ make
After a few thousand lines, I get same seg fault I saw rebuilding package
Loading emacs-lisp/eldoc...
Loading cus-start...
Loading tooltip...
Loading /home/pauljohn/LinuxDownloads/Ubuntu/sources/emacs/emacs-25.1/lisp/leim/leim-list.el (source)...
Finding pointers to doc strings...
Finding pointers to doc strings...done
Dumping under the name emacs
Makefile:736: recipe for target 'bootstrap-emacs' failed
make[1]: *** [bootstrap-emacs] Segmentation fault (core dumped)
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pauljohn/LinuxDownloads/Ubuntu/sources/emacs/emacs-25.1/src'
Makefile:398: recipe for target 'src' failed
make: *** [src] Error 2
While googling the error message, I don't find a fix. I do find plenty of emacs seg faults over time, of course, but they usually give a more informative message. I think the mention of Makefile:736 is referring to the Makefile in the src directory:
bootstrap-emacs$(EXEEXT): temacs$(EXEEXT)
$(MAKE) -C ../lisp update-subdirs
ifeq ($(CANNOT_DUMP),yes)
ln -f temacs$(EXEEXT) $@
else
$(RUN_TEMACS) --batch --load loadup bootstrap
ifneq ($(PAXCTL_dumped),)
$(PAXCTL_dumped) emacs$(EXEEXT)
endif
mv -f emacs$(EXEEXT) $@
endif
I have not been in this situation in a long time.
I found pages about past seg faults building Emacs
1 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=197841. In Arch linux there is a "hardening" package that was installed and Emacs was failing because of that. I found I had a package "hardening-includes" from Ubuntu 16.10 and I removed that to see if the result would change. No!
2 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2015-04/msg00371.html. There was an errant compiler flag. I don't have that flag.
3 http://emacs.1067599.n8.nabble.com/bug-20190-Building-emacs-24-4-against-GCC-5-0-td352965.html says there was an environment flag that was to blame. I don't have that.
The Emacs bug reporting process (https://debbugs.gnu.org/Emacs.html) is, well, difficult me. I can't figure how to submit a new bug.
I uploaded the whole configure/make output in case that is informative:
http://pj.freefaculty.org/scraps/emacs-build-fail-20161013.txt