[gnu.emacs.vms] Problems building Emacs 18.52 on VMS

zap@front.se (Svante Lindahl) (01/11/89)

I'm having problems building GNU Emacs 18.52 on a VMS-system (v4.7).
After having had some problems I got to the step where emacs is dumped
(temacs -l loadup.el dump in [.src]build.com):

	Loading loadup.el...
	Loading subr...
	Loading loaddefs.el...
	Loading simple...
	 uses invalid prefix characters

The lisp files were imported from one of our Suns were Emacs runs
without any problems. I only imported the .elc files unless the .el
file was explicitly asked for.

I think the error-message must be from keymap.c/define_key:
	if (NULL (tem))
	  error ("Key sequence %s uses invalid prefix characters",
		 XSTRING (keys)->data);

As a workaround I deleted simple.elc and imported simple.el from the
Sun. (Also replacing the reference to simple.elc in [.etc]makedoc.com).

Now the dumping works (after I increased PURESIZE in s-vms.h by quite a
bit), but the resulting Emacs does not work properly.

If I start it with "emacs -batch" I get:
	$ emacs -batch
	[Spawning a new Kept EMACS]
	Symbol's value as variable is void: args

	%DCL-F-NOMSG, Message number 00038004
	$

When started without -batch I get this message in the mini-buffer:
	Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
but Emacs is started and I can do trivial things in the *Scratch*
buffer. Less trivial things causes different low-level error messages,
such as

Wrong type argument: integer-or-marker-p, #<EMACS BUG: ILLEGAL DATATYPE (#o177)
(for C-x C-c or M-x save-buffers-kill-emacs, M-x kill-emacs works fine).

Invalid function: #<EMACS BUG: ILLEGAL DATATYPE (#o177) Save your buffers immed
(for C-x C-f <RET> foo.bar<RET>)

I also got "Symbol's value as variable is void: list" at one point but
can't reproduce that right now.

Anybody out there who knows what's going on? I'm clueless and would
really appreciate some help. Thanks in advance!

Please reply by e-mail. If there is interest I'll summarize to this
newsgroup. Sorry this got so long.

Svante.Lindahl@front.se

igb@UUNET.UU.NET (Ian G Batten) (01/16/89)

You can't (trivially) move .elc files from a Sun to a Vax.  Follow the
procedure for building emacs from damaged .elc files (build with doubled
PURESIZE, load just the .el files, recompile them then rebuild emacs.)
This was what I did to move 18.41 and 18.49 from Suns to a uVax.

ian