Desktop Team Update - Monday 12th August 2019

Hi everyone, below you will find the updates from the Desktop team from the last week.

If you’re interested in discussing a topic please start a thread in the Desktop area of Discourse.
We also have our weekly meeting on IRC. We meet on Tuesday at 13:30 UTC in #ubuntu-desktop on Freenode. There will be an “Any Other Business” section at the end where you are welcome to raise topics. These topics might be discussed during the meeting, or afterwards depending on the time, depth of conversation, topic and so on.

Last week’s notes are here: Desktop Team Update - Desktop Team Update - Monday 5th August 2019
Next week’s notes are here: Desktop Team Update - Monday 19th August 2019

1 Like

short week (3 days)

  • ZFS/ZSYS:
    • Wrote MIR for current 0.1 version in distro
    • Implement some “change” signal that will be used later on to optimize booting time.
    • Reduce cyclomatic complexity of many large functions. There is one remaining, the others are tests content.
    • Rearranged/updated and note TODO issues on our planning board.
    • List what’s remaining to do before feature freeze and email sync.
    • Publish and update blog post, started a discourse ubuntu feedback thread, and browse the Internet for feedbacks/comments readings.
  • Misc:
    • Rebased and enhanced session extension mode patch for gnome-shell. Uploaded to ppa silo
4 Likes
1 Like

:computer_mouse: Gnome Shell performance (stutter | latency | CPU):

:bug: Release bugs:

:chart_with_downwards_trend: Backlogs progress

2 Likes

libreoffice24-margin libreoffice

  • 6.3.0 deb:
    • 5x failing armhf tests -> added missing build depends -> pass
    • 2x failing arm64 tests -> disabled -> pass
    • Manual testing for arm64 (RPi3 + MATE) -> pass
    • Manual testing for amd64 -> pass
    • Prepared final packages for upload today
  • 6.3.0 snap:
    • Fixed a couple of broken tests and patches
    • Built, tested, and released

GNOME build/plaform-snap

  • Reduced snap sizes further:
    • Disabled installed-tests on various parts of the build-snap
    • Removed more compilers and interpreters from the platform-snap
    • Removed redundant gtk-common-themes data from the platform-snap
    • Removed usr/share/doc and usr/share/man from both snaps
  • Added $RUNTIME/usr/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH in desktop-launch (Fixes some runtime errors)
  • Added $SNAPCRAFT_STAGE/usr/share to XDG_DATA_DIRS in build-snap env (Fixes vapi errors)
2 Likes

Eoan archive work

  • updated network-manager to the newest 1.20 stable serie
  • Debian syncs&merges (udisks2, graphene)
  • Desktop updates
    • desktop-file-utils (debian/eoan)
    • nautilus stable (debian/eoan/disco) and new serie (debian/eoan)
    • totem new serie (debian/eoan)
    • gnome-bluetooth new serie (debian/synced)
    • gnome-font-viewer new serie (debian/synced)
    • gnome-disk-utility new serie (debian/eoan)
    • pygobject stable (debian/eoan)
    • gnome-video-effetcs

SRU

  • verified the software-properties/bionic SRU

Other

  • emails/discussions about eoan features and next cycle plans
  • updated wslu to also register the www-browser alternative so xdg-open works
  • tried to organize a bit things around GUADEC
  • commited the recent notify-osd uploads to the Vcs on request from the Unity team
  • followed up on utah/iso testing problems
  • got a bit involved in discussion about build issues on the desktop canary image
  • blogged about livepatch desktop integration
2 Likes
  • Verified xRDP SRU https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1817225
  • Reviewed gnome-3-32-1804 and compared to gnome-3-28-1804 in preparation for publishing to stable
  • Tested the snapcraft GNOME extension with a bunch of the GNOME snaps, all looks good and is merged now. I was able to remove as many as 39 lines of yaml in one of the snaps.
  • USN refreshes

thunderbird24 thunderbird

  • fixed bug #1823361 (WeTransfer FileLink provider should be bundled by default)
  • fixed bug #545778 (lightning extension not localized), that’s a 9 year old bug :older_man:

chromium22 chromium

  • investigated and fixed bug #1750243 (StartupWMClass missing in desktop file)
  • updated stable to 76.0.3809.100

libreoffice24-margin libreoffice

  • sponsored Marcus’s upload of 6.3.0 to eoan

package24 other

1 Like

GNOME

  • Rebasing dash to dock and preparing updates for both 3.33.90 and 3.33.91
  • gitlab-ci: Use env bash as interpreter [MR]
  • Tweens removal fix [MR]
  • Shell environment: Don’t use actor if an ease callback destroys it [MR]
  • appDisplay: Disconnect Main item-drag signals on icons destruction [MR]
  • Shell this.actor-removal branch rebasing and various fixes [MR]
  • Shell Extensions: use actor inheritance [MR]
  • Rebased mutter memory fixes MR
  • Libnotify and libwnck reviews and merges

Packaging

  • Prepared debian update for mutter 3.33.90 [MRs] and rebased ubuntu patches [git]
  • Prepared debian update for gnome-shell 3.33.90 [MRs]
  • Prepared debian update for gnome-shell-extensions 3.33.90 [MRs]
3 Likes

I was off last week

  • Mostly worked on updates for GNOME 3.34. The biggest blocker we have here is that Evolution Data Server has an API break, so we need to update all reverse dependencies of libecal-1.2 to use libecal-2.0 instead. This holds back GNOME Shell itself.
  • Reviewied a britney2-ubuntu branch for Łukasz to improve the sending of SRU regression emails, hopefully can turn those back on soon
  • Added some debugging to try to resolve a case where britney2-ubuntu was spamming someone repeatedly about stuck uploads
1 Like

snapd user session agent:

  • PR #7194 (packaging fixes for systemd user units) got another positive review, so is probably ready to land.
  • PR #7197 (exit on idle/peer credential checks) received a review that I need to address. Should be close to landing.
  • I’ve created draft PR #7238 that adds a service control interface. It still needs some work adding spread tests and getting agreement on the API.

snapd interfaces for the Snap Store:

  • PR #7042, implementing the appstream-metadata interface has been merged. We now have all the interfaces merged to support a .deb packages in a confined package management GUI.

snapd icon theme support:

  • PR #6767 has seen no movement. I’ll prod someone to see if anything else is needed to merge it.

Snapd desktop file IDs:

  • While looking at what is necessary to get desktop notifications working for confined applications, I ran up against the problems with desktop file naming for snapped applications. In this case, it turned out to be more than just an inconvenience, and actually blocks the implementation since GNOME’s new notification system is built on top of D-Bus activatable desktop files.
  • I put together a proposal for one way we could give apps limited control here:
  • While something like this is necessary for notifications to function, it isn’t sufficient: we will also require some xdg-desktop-portal changes to correctly determine the desktop file associated with a confined application (probably via a helper from snapd).
3 Likes
  • network-manager: More investigation on the logs of a reporter of the Bionic regression but no clue yet.
  • ippusbxd: Exchanged some ideas about the further development with David Valleau from Google (Chromium OS developer, main contributor), especially got confirmation that it works well on Canon, Epson, and HP printers. Got some ideas about how to get conventional (non-IPP) scanning to work while a multi-function printer is hooked up with ippusbxd.
  • HPLIP: Synced 3.19.6 from Debian because of FF next week.
  • CUPS: Uploaded 2.2.11 to Eoan because of FF next week.
  • Feature Freeze Eoan: First check-up what needs to get updated. OdyX, the Debian printing packager is on vacation, so there were no updates by auto-sync. Planned is Ghostscript 9.27, cups-filters 1.25.2 (I will release it upstream soon), foomatic-db, ModemManager.
  • Google Summer of Code 2019: Reviewed teh work on the Printer Application Snap framework and it looks great. Asked the student also to give the option to snap without Ghostscript, to save resources on Raster-only drivers like Gutenprint. He will include this.
  • OpenPrinting: Monthly phone meeting and monthly report.
  • Bugs.
3 Likes