Issues with setting the `internal-border` face

[cyrus-and]

The internal-border face is ignored in Emacs from emacsformacosx.com.

Here's how to reproduce:

(custom-set-variables
 '(default-frame-alist '((internal-border-width . 100))))

(custom-set-faces
 '(default ((t (:background "black" :foreground "white"))))
 '(internal-border ((t (:background "red")))))

Apparently the culprit is Nix, specifically pkgs.darwin.apple_sdk.frameworks.AppKit, if I manually build Emacs it works alright. More info here.

This is emacs-version when I compile by hand:

GNU Emacs 30.2 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin20.6.0, NS appkit-2022.70 Version 11.7.10 (Build 20G1427)) of 2025-10-08

And this is from emacsformacosx.com:

GNU Emacs 30.2 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin18.7.0, NS appkit-1671.60 Version 10.14.6 (Build 18G9323)) of 2025-08-14

Notice the older appkit version. Do you have any idea how to fix this?

[caldwell]

Interesting. In another project I had to work around Nix using its built-in (old) AppKit/Foundation/etc frameworks. So I think it can be done, though it was a little hacky. I'll try to find which project it was and how I worked around it…

[caldwell]

I'm trying to recreate this issue. This is what I'm currently getting:

Is that correct or incorrect? (I see the red but the internal-border-width seems like it's not respected?)

I'm using Emacs 30.2 from emacsformacos.com on an aarch64 macbook.

[cyrus-and]

Thanks for looking into this!

Is that correct or incorrect?

Well this is indeed correct... but if I run Emacs from the link you posted the border is black, hence the color of the face is not honoured.

(I see the red but the internal-border-width seems like it's not respected?)

That's because it will apply to the newly created frames, e.g., C-x 5 2.

[caldwell]

I noticed you are running macOS 11 on a86_64, so tried on my x86_64 VM (although running on the macOS 10.14 VM that I use to build—I haven't tried on a macOS 11 vm yet) and I get this:

Interestingly, the red shows up in the initial emacs frame, but not the new frame (initially). Then, if I just click the old frame to bring it forward, this happens:

IE, the red suddenly appears on the new frame.

Is that what you are seeing, or on macOS 11 is it never ever going red (on either the initial frame or new frame)?

[cyrus-and]

Is that what you are seeing, or on macOS 11 is it never ever going red (on either the initial frame or new frame)?

In my case the internal border is always black, no matter what.

That weird behaviour you're seeing is probably due to the fact that we're also altering the value of default-frame-alist, which it doesn't immediately apply to existing frames:

Setting this variable does not affect existing frames, only new ones.