bug#13775: 24.3.50; Omissions in documentation for crash reporting

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:27:06 +0400
> 
> As a non-GDB-wielding user with not much C experience, I had a hard time
> following the instructions in `report-emacs-bug' and the ones that
> followed.

I'm not sure your expectations can be met with any reasonable effort.
There's no way we can teach everybody the basics of GNU-style
configure scripts, including how to discover the available switches
and override compiler and linker options.  You need to learn that
elsewhere.  In general, if you cannot figure out how to do something,
just ask, and you _will_ be helped.

Some answers below, because most of this info is available, you just
need to know how to find it.

> 1. Calling `xbacktrace' requires src/.gdbinit to be loaded. It
> a) requires the user to run gdb exactly from src/ (not `gdb src/emacs'),

The file etc/DEBUG tells you that at the beginning:

  ** When you debug Emacs with GDB, you should start it in the directory
  where the executable was made.  That directory has a .gdbinit file
  that defines various "user-defined" commands for debugging Emacs.
  (These commands are described below under "Examining Lisp object
  values" and "Debugging Emacs Redisplay problems".)

> b) requires them to modify the `auto-load safe-path', or that .gdbinit
> is ignored.

This "feature" entered GDB only recently.  Versions of GDB before 7.5
don't need that, and will barf if you use this command.  I don't see
any reasonable way of dealing with this without confusing newbies even
more (while veteran GDB users already know how to negotiate this
obstacle).

> 2. "Compile without optimizations" - how do I do that? `configure
> --help' doesn't seem to show any pertinent options. ...but wait, it says
> I can override the choices made by the script.

Yes, it says near the end how to specify compiler switches.

> a) Do I set the variable when calling `make', or do I have to re-run
> ./configure? Not obvious, the answer is "the latter".

Actually, both will work.

> b) I don't know the choice the script made, how do I not break
> anything by overriding it?

You just need to know, or ask.  It is not reasonable to expect Emacs
documentation to repeat the entire compiler manual, or large portions
thereof.

> 3. In #13749 (which caused me to write this), Paul also suggests using
> -DENABLE_CHECKING. If I'm not mistaken, this variable isn't documented
> anywhere.

As Andreas points out, this is in "./configure --help".