Bug 187810 – app-emacs/haskell-mode-2.3 fails on strange "Symbol's value as variable is void" error

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE

[Description Ari Rahikkala 2007-08-05 13:47:21 UTC]

After the last time I updated my system (first time this summer - it was a big one) emacs started complaining about "Symbol's value as variable is void: \213" on startup. I traced this error to app-emacs/haskell-mode-2.3 and tried uninstalling and reinstalling it, which only led to this:

>>> Compiling source in /var/tmp/portage/app-emacs/haskell-mode-2.3/work/haskell-mode-2.3 ...
emacs --batch --eval '(setq load-path (cons "." load-path))' \
		-f batch-byte-compile haskell-font-lock.el
Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-gentoo.el (source)...
Loading erlang-start...
Loading php-mode...
Symbol's value as variable is void: 
make: *** [haskell-font-lock.elc] Error 255

There *is* a character after "Symbol's value as variable is void: " there, it just doesn't get displayed as the terminal is set to utf-8. According to od the character is byte 139 (octal 0213). As far as I can tell, this character doesn't actually appear in haskell-font-lock.el; I tested this by executing ghci -e "interact $ unlines . filter (elem (Data.Char.chr 139)) . lines" < haskell-font-lock.el.

I've tried app-editors/emacs versions 22.1 and 21.4-r12, both exhibit the same error.

Since the update after which this started occurring changed over a hundred packages, I have no idea what specific change might have caused this.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:




# emerge --info
Portage 2.1.2.11 (default-linux/x86/2007.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.5-r4, 2.6.21-cfs-v6 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.21-cfs-v6 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+
Gentoo Base System release 1.12.9
Timestamp of tree: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:00:01 +0000
distcc 2.18.3 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [disabled]
ccache version 2.4 [disabled]
dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.0.33-r1
dev-lang/python:     2.4.4-r4
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5
dev-util/ccache:     2.4-r7
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.17
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.61
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10
sys-devel/binutils:  2.17
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.16
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.23b
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.21
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -pipe -g"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/bind"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/gconf /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/web2c"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -pipe -g"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms splitdebug strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/gentoo/"
LANG="en_GB"
LC_ALL="en_GB.utf8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--sort-common -Wl,--enable-new-dtags"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages --filter=H_**/files/digest-*"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="3dnow 3dnowext 7zip X a52 aac acl acpi adsl aim alsa amarok amazon ao aotuv artworkextra asf asm asterisk async audacious audiofile auth autoreplace avahi backtrace bdf beagle berkdb bittorrent bjam blender-game bonobo boo bzip2 c++ cairo calendar cdda cddb cdio cdparanoia cdr cdrom cdsound cegui cgi cli clisp cmucl contentcache cracklib crypt css csv cups cursors dbus dedicated dga dhcp djbfft doc dri dvd dvdr dvdread dvi editor edl eds elf emacs enca encode evo examples fam fastcgi fbcon festival ffmpeg fftw fi firefox flac fortran ftp gaim gcj gcl gdb gdbm gif gimp glibc-omitfp glitz glut gmail gmailtimestamps gnome gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk h323 hal haskell html icecast icons iconv icq id3 imagemagick ipv6 irc irssi isdnlog ithreads jabber java javascript jpeg kde kdeenablefinal kdehiddenvisibility kerberos ladspa lame libg++ libnotify live mad midi mikmod mmx mmxext mng mono mozsvg mp3 mpeg mplayer msn mudflap musepack mysql ncurses netboot nls nodrm nptl nptlonly nsplugin ocaml offensive ogg openal opengl openmp oscar oss pam pch pcre pdf perl php png postgres pppd python qmail qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime rar readline reflection rtc rtsp ruby sdl session shorten sid sox speex spell spl sse ssl svg tcpd theora threads tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb vorbis win32codecs x86 xcomposite xml xorg xscreensaver xsl xv xvid xvmc zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon fbdev"
Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

[Comment 1 Ari Rahikkala 2007-08-05 17:13:44 UTC]

Created attachment 126973 [details]
screwed site-gentoo.el

Well, turns out I submitted without thinking. I'd started up emacs several times after removing haskell-mode and it always threw the same error, but I never realised that that made it... somewhat unlikely that haskell-mode would be the cause of this bug.

Looking around a bit more, I found a chunk of line noise in the middle of /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-gentoo.el. I have no idea what put it in there, but I'm going to attach that file here now just in case someone with deep knowledge about elisp-common.eclass wants to figure out if it could be a bug in Gentoo. After that, I'm going to try and remove the noise and see if it helps, and maybe play around with elisp packages a bit to see if I can reproduce its creation.

[Comment 2 Ari Rahikkala 2007-08-05 17:28:13 UTC]

Right, this time I tracked it down correctly. The noise was from 61gtk-doc-gentoo.el. I have no idea how it got corrupted. The version in /usr/portage/dev-util/gtk-doc/files was fine, so I reinstalled gtk-doc and got rid of the error. I don't think I will be able to reproduce this one again.

Let's see if bugzilla allows me to change the resolution myself...

[Comment 3 Christian Faulhammer (RETIRED) 2007-08-06 06:34:42 UTC]

Reopen for duping

[Comment 4 Christian Faulhammer (RETIRED) 2007-08-06 06:36:35 UTC]

Great you noticed yourself. :)  That was a bad mistake with gtk-doc, but is fixed now without a revbump unfortunately.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 187224 ***