xmaxima "killing X11-server" Re: [Maxima] maxima and cmucl 2002-08-13 don't fit

On Tue, 2002-10-15 at 13:50, Raymond Toy wrote:
> >>>>> "jarausch" == jarausch  <jarausch@igpm.rwth-aachen.de> writes:

>     jarausch> and doesn't kill my X11-server when finishing.
> 
> Really!  How is that possible?

Ugh. There is a bug in xmaxima that causes it to appear to crash X11
under the right circumstances. I say "appear to crash X11" because that
isn't what happens at all. (I, too, had assumed it was crashing X11
until I found the bug.) What it really does is (semi-) intentionally
call "kill -1". Here is what "man kill" says about the option "-1":

              -1     All processes with pid larger than 1 will be
                     signaled.

I.e., xmaxima tries to stop just about every process on your computer. I
found this bug once and fixed it so that xmaxima would never call "kill
-1". Unfortunately, my fix was incompatible with windows, so it was
backed out.

I'm refiling this bug.

--Jim

P.S. xmaxima uses "pid = -1" as an internal flag meaning that
the maxima process has not been started. -1 is a **VERY BAD** default
value for pid.