This happens on both i386 and x86_64.

I don't have an environment available to test this at the moment (F-9 only here, and uim 1.5.x which has the xemacs subpackage does not build on F-9 in mock), so it might take some time until I can test.  In the meantime, I forwarded the report to the upstream xemacs-beta mailing list.

Upstream recommends trying with XEmacs that has been built without XIM support.  Could you try these scratch builds out and report how it goes wrt. the assertion failure and if you notice any other regressions with the XIM-less build?

http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=1104564

With this noxim build I still get the assertion failed when I follow my recipe.

This package has changed ownership in the Fedora Package Database.  Reassigning to the new owner of this component.

I get the same coredump when I select anything on the menu. I was getting a font error:

Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1, 				-*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*, 				*" to type FontSet
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset

Setting:

LANG=C

instead of 

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

sets rid of that error. It also got rid of this in the scratch buffer at startup:

(1) (xintl/error) Can't initialize XIM: Can't get fontset resource for Input Method

This is under F11 with xemacs-21.5.28-12.fc11.x86_64 and xemacs-21.5.29-1.fc12.x86_64

The abort is happening because compute_menubar_data is returning null. I tried to figure out why to no avail. After several levels of indirection, menu_item_descriptor_to_widget_value_1 is recursively called to build the menus from lisp objects. 

Its having problems with the "Cmds" menu when its trying to define the item "Define Global Abbrev for". It chokes at gui-x.c line 462 when it does the Feval.

      /* Shortcut to avoid evaluating suffix each time */
      if (STRINGP (pgui->suffix))
        suffix2 = pgui->suffix;
      else
        {
Dies here->          suffix2 = Feval (pgui->suffix);
          CHECK_STRING (suffix2);
        }

Debugging lisp evaluation is beyond me :(

I get the same with xemacs-21.5.28-12.fc11.i586, i.e., when I run xemacs and click anywhere on the menu bar, xemacs crashes immediately with the error:

  Fatal error: assertion failed, file menubar-x.c, line 579, 
  ABORT()                          
                                                                                    Fatal error (6).

This does not happen with the -vanilla flag (even after loading the init file).

Is anyone willing to try an experiment for me?  I suspect the problem is a buggy, and duplicated, function in /usr/share/xemacs/mule-packages/lisp/mule-base/mule-util.el.  If someone suffering from this problem is feeling brave, try editing that file to comment out the definitions of store-substring, truncate-string-to-width, and truncate-string.  You'll have to bytecompile the file afterwards.  Tell me if that fixes the problem.

I'm going to try this later myself, but if you're in a hurry, this information would be useful.

Jerry,
I did not suffer from this problem (removed xemacs-uim long ago
because it made xemacs unusable), but I tried your change any way.

After loading x-uim, before making any change in mule-util.el, I saw
the same core dump as in Comment #0.  
After commenting the 3 functions you mentioned, and bytecompiling
mule-util.el, I no longer see the core dump when clicking on the menu.

So your fix is good for the core dump.  Thanks a lot!

I just pushed a new xemacs-packages-base to fix two other bugs, so the fix for this won't be in the next update.  However, I'll get to work rolling out yet another package with a fix for this bug in it.

Thanks for confirming the fix, Tim.  It has been applied upstream.

For those of you out there who want menus back and don't have time to wait for the fix, the quick fix for me was to uninstall the package that is causing the problem

  xemacs-uim

as I don't seem to use anyway...

Best, Matthias

PS Thanks to everybody who has helped to track this down, and thanks to Jerry for fixing it!

xemacs-packages-base-20090217-3.fc11 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 11.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/xemacs-packages-base-20090217-3.fc11

xemacs-packages-base-20090217-3.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xemacs-packages-base'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F11/FEDORA-2009-9235

Re: Comment #13
I tried 
   su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xemacs-packages-base'
and in my /var/log/yum.log I have (I am in EDT = UTC-5)
    Sep 02 22:37:00 Updated: xemacs-packages-base-20090217-2.fc11.noarch
I thought I should get -3, not -2?  Did I missed anything?  Or should
I wait a bit longer for the update to propagate?

The update probably just hadn't propagated to whatever mirror yum chose for you.  Try again and see if you get it.

*** Bug 520977 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I can confirm that the version in fedora-testing has fixed the problem in
bug 520977.

xemacs-packages-base-20090217-3.fc11 seems to fix the problem for me.  I first installed xemacs-uim again, and restarted XEmacs.  This resulted in the crash I originally described.  After installing the update from updates-testing and restarting XEmacs, I don't get the crash anymore.

xemacs-packages-base-20090217-3.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

I have a problem with Updating the package:

[root@PCRodri ~]# yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xemacs-packages-base
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
updates-testing                                            | 3.4 kB     00:00     
updates-testing/primary_db                                 | 472 kB     00:06     
Setting up Update Process
No Packages marked for Update

This is on Fedora 10 x86_64

I'd like t know if it would be posible to solve that for Fedora 10... 

Thanks!!

Already tried:

[root@PCRodri ~]# yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xemacs-packages-base-20090217-3.fc11
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
adobe-linux-i386                                         |  951 B     00:00     
http://mirror.ispbrasil.com.br/fedora/releases/10/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 12] Timeout: <urlopen error timed out>
Trying other mirror.
fedora                                                   | 2.8 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free                                           | 2.7 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free-updates                                   | 2.8 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-nonfree                                        | 2.7 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates                                | 2.8 kB     00:00     
updates                                                  | 3.4 kB     00:00     
Setting up Update Process
Error: No Package Matching xemacs-packages-base-20090217-3.fc11

Sorry, I haven't backported any of my recent XEmacs fixes to F-10, because it's been all I could do to keep up with F-11 and later.  I can roll out this particular fix, though.  If you are in a hurry, you can do the bit of work described in comment 8 to get up and running until the update is available.

Ok, I didn't know that the work explained in comment 8 fixed the problem...

Anyway, I'll try to fix it, but I'm not shure to be able... I would be grateful if you could make a detailed explanation of that way...

Thanks in advantage...

Shodry,
Here is a workaround you can use before Jerry ports the fix to F10.

Workaround:
  - remove xemacs-uim if you don't need uim.  If you don't know
    what uim is, you probably don't need it.

          yum erase xemacs-uim

Re: Comment #23
To do what Jerry said in Comment #8:

    # become root in gnome (or kde)  so you can 
    # write to /usr/shared/...

    # remove xemacs-uim so you can use xemacs menu
        yum erase xemacs-uim

    f=/usr/share/xemacs/mule-packages/lisp/mule-base/mule-util.el
    ls -l $f*  # output edited to fit into bugzilla comment field.
        -rw-r--r-- 1 21031 1999-07-23 02:55 mule-util.el
        -rw-r--r-- 1  6717 2007-05-18 14:24 mule-util.elc

    xemacs $f &   # must run with GUI so we have menu bar.
        # remove these functions
        #     store-substring
        #     truncate-string-to-width
        #     truncate-string
        # They are at line 72 to line 139, inclusive, in
        #     xemacs-packages-base-el-20070427-1.fc8.noarch 
    # in xemacs, from menu, choose 
    #    Lisp (right most one) --> Byte-compile This File
    # the status line of xemacs should say
    #    Wrote /usr/share/.../mule-util.elc

    ls -l $f*  # output edited to fit into bugzilla comment field.
        -rw-r--r-- 1 21031 1999-07-23 02:55 mule-util.el
        -rw-r--r-- 1  6662 2009-10-15 17:40 mule-util.elc

    # now restore xemacs-uim if you want it
        yum install xemacs-uim

xemacs-packages-base-20070427-3.fc10 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 10.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/xemacs-packages-base-20070427-3.fc10

Thanks for helping out, Tim.  I've gone out on a limb here and done my first ever non-new-package push directly to stable to get this fixed ASAP.  Let me know if problems persist after the update becomes available.

Problem solved, thank you so much...

xemacs-packages-base-20070427-3.fc10 has been pushed to the Fedora 10 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.