bug#55870: GNU Emacs 26.3, Select All(C-x h) does not work

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: brucelam1982pi@anche.no,  larsi@gnus.org,  55870@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2022 19:57:20 +0800
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > So the growing memory can only be explained by the consing of
> > selection_value onto terminal->Vselection_alist, where selection_value
> > is the text being copied by M-w?
> 
> The previous value of the selection will also be removed from
> terminal->Vselection_alist, so it shouldn't cause memory usage to
> constantly increase.
> 
> > Can any of the potential requests in this situation allocate lots of
> > memory?
> 
> Yes.  The string is copied each time another program requests the
> selection, and we have to allocate a buffer the size of the encoded X
> property data each time we want to send it to another client.
> 
> But unfortunately I can't see any obvious memory leak here.  The
> reporter should build with TRACE_SELECTION and send some of the output,
> which could reveal, for example, bugs in the other program (possibly a
> clipboard manager, since clipboard managers are a known problematic area
> in the X world) that the code in xselect.c doesn't already take into
> account.

Bruce, can you build Emacs with that option enabled and provide us
with the traces?

Also, do you have some software installed on your system that could
automatically request the clipboard contents when Emacs puts text
there?  If so, perhaps disabling that software will resolve the
problem.

Thanks.