Assistance sought with testing the fix for bug [e3888d5820]

(not just from Tcl-core members, but from everybody frequenting this mailing list)


Introduction
============
Since a few months, François Vogel and I have been targetting this bug. We believe that the bug itself has been fixed (in its separate bugfix branch). Also, the associated non-regression test succeeds everywhere we know, except on a single (so far) system, and we're trying to find out why.

We tend to believe that the case where the non-regression test fails is exceptional. However, we'd rather not bet on it; there's a chance we may have overlooked something. Finding the root cause of the test failure, however, is progressing slowly:
- it's up to me (Erik) because the test failure exhibits under a computer system configuration that François doesn't have.
- I have infrequent experience with debugging at the C-side (even zero experience if you count that it's Tk code).

Therefore, while I'm continuing the pursuit of the cause, we also want to know better how exceptional the test failure is. To that end we seek your help, which boils down to exercising the current non-regression test and reporting the results.

    * Ticket reference:    https://core.tcl-lang.org/tk/tktview?name=e3888d5820


Prerequisites for participation
===============================
- Any computer with graphical display, supported by Tk
  (detail for linux: the more window managers you have access to, the better)
- Any Tcl version installed, against which Tk8.6 compiles
- able to compile Tk against your installed Tcl, and run the non-regression test.
Please see the procedure below for specifics.


Technical summary of the test failure
=====================================
A. Thus far, the test failure happens with only one specific window manager / Linux desktop configuration:
- OpenSuSE Leap 15.0
- Desktop KDE/Plasma, with the following version info:
  - KDE Plasma Version: 5.12.8
  - KDE Frameworks Version: 5.45.0
  - Qt Version: 5.9.4 (maybe irrelevant)

B. Two other window managers on the very same machine/OS don't exhibit the test failure. This appears to exclude the X-server as a cause.

C. An older KDE/Plasma desktop version, under OpenSuSE 13.2, on another older computer, doesn't exhibit the failure. This might indicate that the problem isn't a KDE/Plasma problem. It doesn't indicate very much else though, because a desktop has a lot of other variables that may interfere.


Procedure
=========
a. Download the Tk distribution at check-in [5fa8b7e7] on the bug-fix branch:

        https://core.tcl-lang.org/tk/info/5fa8b7e78e9476ba

b. Compile for your machine/OS/Tcl configuration.

c. Make sure that the tktest binary has been built, e.g. after "make tktest" ("make test" does that too but also runs the entire test suite, which isn't nesessary; see the next step)

d. Run only the test bind-35.1 under as many different window managers as you have access to. To that end, please use the following standard invocation from the build directory:

    make test TESTFLAGS="-file bind.test -match bind-35.1 -verbose beps"

e. Please report your results to the ticket:

          https://core.tcl-lang.org/tk/tktview?name=e3888d5820

   mentioning:

       - the test result / output
       - the OS and version
       - the desktop/window manager and version (e.g. environment variable WINDOWMANAGER)
       - anything else that you deem relevant in this context.


Thanks a lot in advance for your help, also on behalf of François Vogel,

Erik Leunissen
==============