[ESS] Startup error on XEmacs with ESS 2.5.11 (error "Stack overflow in regexp matcher")

[Rodney Sparapani]

john.gavin at ubs.com wrote:

>Hi Rodney,
>
>I tried to upgrade from XEmacs 21.4.6 to 21.4.19, as you sugget,
>but that didnt change anything.
>
>However, I also decided to start looking for the problem
>all over again (with XEmacs 21.4.19 and ESS 5.2.12). 
>Eventually, I found the problem to be the line
>'(setq default-directory "s:/qrms/stats/r")' in my init.el
>which appears just after loading ess-site.el.
>
>(require 'executable)
>(load "C:/etc/XEmacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/ess/lisp/ess-site.el")
>(setq default-directory "s:/qrms/stats/r") 
>
>Commenting out or moving the line '(setq default-directory "s:/qrms/stats/r")'
>to the end of my init.el file works.
>A far as I can remember this line '(setq default-directory "s:/qrms/stats/r")'
>has been in my init.el file for ages and in that position in the file.
>So I am no wiser as to what caused this problem
>but at least I can start XEmacs again with any errors.
>
>Thanks for your time.
>
>Regards,
>
>John.
>  
>
Hi John:

I don't see why that would matter, but I'm glad that you found it!  
However, your
location of installing ESS seems very weird.  It looks like an Emacs 
installation
shoe-horned into a location of the XEmacs package system where it 
doesn't belong.  When you are using the XEmacs package system and you 
have to (load ...) rather than (require ...), there is something wrong.  
With the release of the native Windows XEmacs 21.4.19, you can unpack 
ESS under the site-packages directory (where Emacs packages are supposed 
to go), which is by default C:\Program Files\XEmacs\site-packages.  For 
example, ess-site.el would be found at
C:\Program Files\XEmacs\site-packages\ess\lisp\ess-site.el 
You seem to have over-ridden the default so for you, I guess, it should be

C:/etc/XEmacs/site-packages/ess/lisp/ess-site.el


Rodney