Re: Big desktop undo buffer crashes Emacs

[Bill Wohler]

Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden> wrote:

> From my previous reply:
> 
>    I said that it might solve "part" of your problem.  The question is
>    whether the 3M of undo is legitimate.  Take a look at what is in that
>    buffer.  Does the huge size of the buffer seem legitimate, because
>    there really is that much info to save?  I guess that you know that
>    you can produce the buffer using `M-x desktop-save'.
> 
> Well, the size of the undo info is not necessarily related to the size
> of the buffer.  In my setup, after `M-x desktop-save', I get a
> *desktop* buffer of size 2943, but my buffer-undo-list (_without_ my
> patch applied) is very small:
> 
> (nil
>  (1 . 2944)
>  (t 0 . 0))
> 
> I guess that if you created the *desktop* buffer and did 
> `C-h v buffer-undo-list' in it, you would get a really huge *Help*
> buffer, assuming it would not make your Emacs crash.

Right now my desktop buffer is 32 kB; the size of the *Help* buffer you
describe is 68 kB. Running desktop-save did not change the size of
either (much, the *Help* buffer grew by 200 bytes after running `C-h v
buffer-undo-list' again).

By the way, the only two desktop-related items in my .emacs are turning
on desktop-save-mode (which is probably obvious ;-) and this:

  (run-at-time 60 300 'desktop-save "~") ;it would be better to catch HUP and
                                         ;call desktop-save before exiting

I've yet to write the code to catch a kill or quit and run desktop-save
on an as-needed basis rather than regularly--maybe someone can volunteer
a trick there--but still, why would the buffer go from 68 kB to 3 MB
overnight? I think this is the only "cron job" *I've* set up.

Still, I think Stefan might be correct. What does it mean to have undo
in the *desktop* buffer in the first place?

-- 
Bill Wohler <address@hidden>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
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