[tex-live] [pretest] pdfcrop crashes when called from certain directory

[Uwe Siart]

Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> writes:

> If there is a chance to improve the output of pdfcrop --debug, it
> would be quite helpful to provide error messages from ghostscript as
> well instead of just mentioning its exit status.  Don't know whether
> pdfcrop --debug does it already, but it should.

This is what pdfcrop --debug spits out:

d:\user\coupling-structure-letter\figures>pdfcrop --debug s-params.pdf
PDFCROP 1.38, 2012/11/02 - Copyright (c) 2002-2012 by Heiko Oberdiek.
* Restricted mode: disabled
* Option `pdfversion': auto
* Perl executable: c:\programme\texlive\2016\tlpkg\tlperl\bin\perl.exe
* Perl version: v5.22.1
* Pointer size: 4
* Pipe support: yes
* Fork support: no
* OS name: MSWin32
* Arch name: MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
* System: win
* Not found (gswin32c): gswin32c.exe
* Found (gswin32c): C:\programme\texlive\2016\tlpkg\tlgs\bin\gswin32c.exe
* Autodetected ghostscript command: gswin32c
* Input file: s-params.pdf
* Output file: s-params-crop.pdf
* Margins: 0 0 0 0
* PDF header: %PDF-1.4
* Using PDF minor version: 4
* Running ghostscript for BoundingBox calculation ...
* Ghostscript call: gswin32c -sDEVICE=bbox -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -c save pop -f s-params.pdf
* Cleanup
* Temporary files: tmp-pdfcrop-792.tex
!!! Error: Ghostscript exited with error code 5!
C:\Programme\texlive\2016\bin\win32\runscript.tlu:679: command failed with exit code 5:
perl.exe c:\Programme\texlive\2016\texmf-dist\scripts\pdfcrop\pdfcrop.pl --debug s-params.pdf

> In order to solve Uwe's problem we have to know *how* ghostscript
> crashed.  ATM we only know *that* it crashed.  Without ghostscript's
> error messages we can only guess.

At least I can say that it might be related to gs 9.19. I have the same
problem with TL15 final, but it does not appear with TL14 final.

The only special thing about that directory is that it is under VC by
subversion (TortoiseSVN). But I could reproduce the crash on a different
HD volume with the same path (except the drive letter). Therefore I
would exclude file permissions, TortoiseSVN, and bad sectors as
potential culprits. The problem also disappears in subdirectories. So it
isn't the path length either.

-- 
Uwe