Version:           v.3 beta2 (using KDE KDE 3.1)
Installed from:    RedHat RPMs
Compiler:          gcc 3.2.2-5 
OS:          Linux

I am coding on a PIII 750 with 256MB RAM.  Crashes are such a problem that I save every few words that I type.  It appears to be a problem only in the larger files.  I have not taken the time to narrow down the cause.  They seem to come in two flavors.

One seems to be related to auto-completion.  That may explain the correlation to file size if it is trying to process a very large number of remembered words.  Sometimes it appears to be struggling with auto-completion -- taking a long time to display what has been typed.  Sometimes it just crashes with no warning.

The other type almost seems to have something to do with the mouse pointer in the far left margin or typing at the margin.  This is far less frequent.

There are two other variants on these two flavors.
In one case, KDevelop just vanishes -- no trace anywhere.
In the other case, KDevelop is still running and is consuming an enormous amount of CPU processing time.  In fact, two processes are running but only one is spinning.  The other is idle.

Here is a backtrace:

[New Thread 16384 (LWP 2645)]
[New Thread 32769 (LWP 2675)]
[New Thread 16386 (LWP 2676)]
0x4142976a in waitpid () from /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0
#0  0x4142976a in waitpid () from /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0
#1  0x40a8857d in KCrash::defaultCrashHandler(int) ()
   from /usr/lib/libkdecore.so.4
#2  0x4142867e in __pthread_sighandler () from /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0
#3  <signal handler called>
#4  0x42365954 in KSharedPtr<TextLine>::operator=(KSharedPtr<TextLine> const&)
    () from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#5  0x422ee981 in KateBufBlock::flushStringList() ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#6  0x422ec418 in KateBuffer::checkDirtyMax() ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#7  0x422ec5b8 in KateBuffer::dirtyBlock(KateBufBlock*) ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#8  0x422ed52f in KateBuffer::updateHighlighting(unsigned, unsigned, bool) ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#9  0x422ed5e6 in KateBuffer::slotBufferUpdateHighlight(unsigned, unsigned) ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#10 0x422eba33 in KateBuffer::qt_invoke(int, QUObject*) ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#11 0x40edb0c9 in QObject::activate_signal(QConnectionList*, QUObject*) ()
   from /usr/lib/qt-3.1/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#12 0x422eb547 in KateBuffer::pleaseHighlight(unsigned, unsigned) ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#13 0x422ecde1 in KateBuffer::line(unsigned) ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#14 0x422eddd6 in KateBuffer::text() () from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#15 0x4230528f in KateDocument::text() const ()
   from /usr/lib/kde3/libkatepart.so
#16 0x41e4843f in KDevSourceProvider::contents(QString const&) ()
   from /usr/local/kde/lib/kde3/libkdevcppsupport.so
#17 0x41f755ea in Driver::parseFile(QString const&, bool, bool) ()
   from /usr/local/kde/lib/libkdevcppparser.so.0
#18 0x41e467de in BackgroundParser::parseFile(QString const&, bool, bool) ()
   from /usr/local/kde/lib/kde3/libkdevcppsupport.so
#19 0x41e47197 in BackgroundParser::run() ()
   from /usr/local/kde/lib/kde3/libkdevcppsupport.so
#20 0x40e71c78 in QProc::~QProc() () from /usr/lib/qt-3.1/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#21 0x41423a21 in pthread_start_thread () from /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0