Older blog entries for seb128 (starting at number 35)

22 Dec 2006 (updated 22 Dec 2006 at 21:02 UTC) »

Having compiz rocking for feisty would be really nice. Since the previous version didn't work really fine on my desktop (ATI card) I've decided to update the feisty package to 0.3.4 (if you opened bugs on launchpad that would be nice to try to the new version and update them to mention if they are fixed or no) and to give it a new try.

The new version works pretty fine on my laptop (intel video card), not that fine with an ATI radeon 9600 card apparently: the window were not refreshed correctly (GTK widget all grey when opening a window and only displayed fine after resizing the window).

Yesterday gandalfn, who is doing some work around compiz packages for Ubuntu, suggested some xorg option to try to get compiz better.Using 'Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"' fixed that problem and now compiz is working correctly.

There is still some features lacking at the moment to make the switch to compiz easy. One problem is that it doesn't use the keybindings previously configured with GNOME capplet. Another one is how workspaces are working. The NEWS from compiz 0.3.4 mention "Support for multiple desktops (workspaces)". The desktop switcher applet still doesn't agree with compiz apparently (ctrl-alt-left or right don't change the workspace selected on the applet which is confusing). I know there is some libwnck patches available to make it work better with compiz, they add some API though, which means that if we use them and upstream decide to go a different way we will have to break the libwnck package ABI when switching to the upstream version which is not nice. Once those problems fixed compiz will probably be very nice to use ;)

Today starts the Ubuntu "Reduce the delta with upstream" week where we will spend some time to clean up the packages changes and to send upstream the patches that should go upstream. The desktop team has created a wiki page for that, you might be interest to have a look on it and give a hand to update it (other team might be interested to do the same).

If you want to participate or have any question feel free to join #ubuntu-bugs on freenode (or team specific chans like #ubuntu-desktop). We also welcome upstream wanting to talk about changes we do to their application! (Vincent if you read that, are you sure you still don't want that gnome-panel "add to panel" patch upstream? ;)

The new version of Ubuntu:"Edgy Eft" is now available. It has GNOME 2.16.1, firefox 2.0, f-spot, a faster and nicer startup and many other things too. You can read the details from the announce mail. The new version of Edubuntu, Xubuntu and Kubuntu are also available. Congrats to all the people who worked on those new versions and contributed to make them rock!

The Mountain View summit will take place soon. If you have nice ideas for the next version of Ubuntu, a Call for Topics has been made for you ;)

5 Oct 2006 (updated 5 Oct 2006 at 21:44 UTC) »

Some days ago, after the pygtk 2.10.2 issue which created a flood of deskbar-applets bugs on bugzilla, I had a discussion on #bugs with guenther about the number of bugs opened against evolution without an useful backtrace.

I already noticed on some occasions than there is cases where gdb produces a correct backtrace and bug-buddy doesn't get an useful one. I was wondering if the issue is due to bug-buddy and I decided to have an another look with that the pygtk 2.10.2,deskbar crasher

  • From the bug-buddy bug:
    Thread 1 (Thread 47961906685648 (LWP 32518)):
    #0  0x00002b9efffbeeef in waitpid () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
    No symbol table info available.
    #1  0x000000000000000b in ?? ()
    No symbol table info available.
    #2  0x38000000006fa750 in ?? ()
    No symbol table info available.
    #3  0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
    No symbol table info available.
    #0  0x00002b9efffbeeef in waitpid () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
    
  • The apport backtrace is about the same

  • From gdb when running deskbar-applet with it:
    Thread 1 (Thread 47933151876816 (LWP 32616)):
    #0  0x00002b984e97b297 in IA__g_type_fundamental
    (type_id=4035225266131284752) at gtype.c:3098
    #1  0x00002b984e961b90 in IA__g_boxed_free
    (boxed_type=4035225266131284752, boxed=0x7fff5cac71d0)
        at gboxed.c:453
    #2  0x00002b984e82ef85 in init_gobject () from
    /var/lib/python-support/python2.4/gtk-2.0/gobject/_gobject.so
    #3  0x000000000044537f in PyTuple_Size ()
    ...
    It looks like a gdb issue then. Attaching gdb after the crash doesn't produce a correct backtrace in some cases. I've tried with gdb 6.4.1 from dapper and gdb 6.4.90 from edgy, no difference. Opinions on that? Any reason why, in some case, gdb can't get a proper backtrace?
  • 30 Sep 2006 (updated 30 Sep 2006 at 21:37 UTC) »

    Damien, Ubuntu edgy has not been released yet (the beta version is available for some days and has GTK 2.10.3). GTK 2.10.4 has been uploaded on friday and has been tested before upload. I knew about the ekiga crasher (you pointed a bug about it by mail on friday morning before the upload to edgy) and decided to upload it anyway because the desktop was not exploding with it, the new version was available for almost a week without a lot of bugzilla activity about it and that's the way we work on unstable distribution: we push the new versions when available (if they don't break too much) and work on issues created by the update then. No luck for you than ekiga was crashing on startup and that the new bug-buddy makes easy for user to file a flood of duplicates about a crasher issue. A patched GTK package has been uploaded on saturday afternoon with the upstream fix for that issue

    Now than edgy beta is available the universe freeze has been announced. No new version nor new package (out of UVF exceptions) from now until edgy. Some nice changes landed before the freeze though:

  • The telepathy team has been rocking and most of upstream components have packaged and uploaded to universe

  • A slab package has been uploaded to universe. If you want to try you just have to install the gnome-main-menu package and add the "main menu" applet (not the one with the ubuntu icon, the other one) to your panel. As a side note, the package is based on the Debian package rather than on the work done by Viper550 to integrate it to Ubuntu. The reason is that the desktop team was pretty busy when he was doing most of the changes and nobody stepped to review and upload them by then. I did had a look on his work some weeks ago and sent him a mail with some comments to get the package to universe and got no reply yet. Viper550, if you are still interested to get your changes applied for edgy feel free to join #ubuntu-desktop to talk about that

  • A gnomescan package has also been uploaded to universe, thank to Ã%0tienne Bersac who is upstream and did most of the packaging work too

  • Next to come: GNOME 2.16.1!
  • 28 Sep 2006 (updated 28 Sep 2006 at 20:02 UTC) »

    "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Beta Release of Ubuntu 6.10 - codenamed "Edgy Eft", you can read the details on the announce mail.

    Don't hesitate to open a bug on launchpad if you face any issue with it, your feedback is welcome. We had a good bug day wednesday with active people on launchpad and #ubuntu-bugs, thanks to everybody who participated! If you want to give a hand to make edgy rocking don't hesitate to join, we will likely have bug days every week and most of the distribution team will focus on bug triage and fixing until edgy

    21 Sep 2006 (updated 21 Sep 2006 at 11:42 UTC) »

    Thanks to the incredible work done by Martin Pitt and to Adam Conrad (who did the buildd changes required), Ubuntu edgy is now getting debug symbols for all the packages. You can read the announce for details on the topic.

    Easy steps to try it:

  • add "deb http://people.ubuntu.com/~pitti/ddebs edgy main universe" to your /etc/apt/sources.list
  • run "sudo apt-get update" (or update your packages index with your preferred tool)
  • profit! (install <package>-dbgsym for whatever package you want.)

    The tools are running since yesterday only so not a lot of packages are available from it right now but it's only a matter to rebuild packages, the GNOME stack should be mostly rebuilt with GNOME 2.16.1 by example

    Happy bug triage to everybody and don't forget to hug Martin and Adam for their work ;)

  • Congrats to everybody who worked on the new GNOME 2.16!

    If you are an Ubuntu user the new version is already available to edgy, just update and let we know how it works for you. Feel free to report your issues on launchpad (or on the GNOME bugzilla if you are confident you face an upstream bug). If you are not an Ubuntu user that might be a good occasion to give a try to it and to the new GNOME too ;)

    Speaking about bugs and desktop, people wanting to give a hand (to triage and forward bugs by example), or simply discuss about the desktop, are welcome to join the Ubuntu Desktop Team!

    16 Apr 2006 (updated 16 Apr 2006 at 17:14 UTC) »

    Some news of GNOME to Ubuntu:

    * After the previous blog discussion about Ubuntu not using the GTK icon cache, dholbach pinged me saying he wrote the small build changes required to automatically update the cache for most of the GNOME packages on Ubuntu. The issue was the number of rebuilds rather than the lack of tools, but since he started on it we decided to go with the rebuild way just before GNOME 2.14.1. Daniel uploaded his changes and made a list of packages to build on the wik., and since we rebuilt most of GNOME for the new version, now Ubuntu does use the GTK icon cache too!

    * GNOME 2.14.1 has been uploaded to dapper this week and will be the version used for the dapper beta CD next week. The Ubuntu Desktop Team still gets load of bugs, thank you for the bugsquad people who work with us to keep up with them, the dapper desktop will rock! The beta CD that will be rolled next week is probably a good occasion for you to play with dapper if you had planned to do so. There is still some bugs that would be nice to fix before dapper, so if you want to participate feel free to send patches or join the discussions on IRC or on the desktop-list by example

    * A new rhythmbox tarball (0.9.4) has been rolled today. We have no plan to ship it with dapper for the moment but I've uploaded a package (source and i386) on http://people.ubuntu.com/~seb128/deb (works as an apt source too) for those who want to play with the new version (there are also some gaim 2.0beta3 packages at the same place)

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