2017-11-27 9:20 GMT+01:00 Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com>:

Hi,

There are recurrent reports that Pharo is crashing often.

However, at the moment I believe the reasons are not clarified. So, this mail is not about fixing the issues, but first about clarifying what they are.

Namely:

- I know about the typing problem on MacOS (Sierra or High Sierra). I encounter this problem daily (literally), and I know that I am not the only one. For example, this can occur when I type ��classs�� fast and then delete the last character. It is documented here:
https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/issues/141

- Some people talk about the FreeType problem, but I could not find a place where this is described. So, while this might be a problem, I am not sure that this problem is actually causing crashes.

Hi Tudor,

I did not experience directly the FreeType related crash, but here is an analysis of what could potentially happen, a cairo_font_face still pointing on a FreeType FT_Face that has already been freed (dangling pointer...).

https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20776/Potential-dangling-ref-to-freed-FT_Face

I started to inquire this after an unrelated libgit crash and reported in the thread

"[Pharo-dev] ExternalAddress uniqueness (was Re: Call for help for stability and rewrite of FreeType)"

So, first question:
- is Pharo crashing on another system than MacOS Sierra or HighSierra?
- how does the FreeType problem look like?

Cheers,
Doru

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