Monday 19th November 2018

[willcooke]

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 the Community Hub (this site).
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: Monday 12th November 2018
Next week’s notes are here: https://community.ubuntu.com/t/monday-26th-november-2018/8807

[azzar1]

• Packaging:
  • Upload gjs 1.54.3 to Debian Unstable with the ‘gnome-shell --replace’ & ‘debugexit’ fixes (PR, Status: )
• dash-to-dock:
  • gnome-shell segfault when locking the screen with windows previews open (Issue, PR, Status: )
  • working on the dash over lockscreen issue (I’m able to reproduce a variant of it on bionic).
• gnome-shell:
  • Critical warning when app is closed while popup menu is opened (Issue, PR, Status )
• SRU bug verifications:
  • verified that update-manager 1:18.04.11.7 fixes LP: #1787553
  • verified that gnome-intitial-setup 3.28.0-2ubuntu6.16.04.4 fixes LP: #1764723
  • verified that gnome-intitial-setup 3.28.0-2ubuntu6.16.04.4 fixes LP: #1789925
• Livepatch:
  • Read privacy url from /etc/os-release in livepatch page of gnome-initial-setup (MP, Status: )

---

• RLS bugs:
  • Bionic:
    • gnome-initial-setup says that Livepatch is “all set” even if enabling is still in progress: in bionic-proposed, SRU verified, should land in main in the next few days
  • Cosmic:
    • [regression] mozjs60 crashes with SIGSEGV on gnome-shell exit, in GetPropertyOperation() from Interpret() from js::RunScript()
      Status Legend: mutter and gjs has been uploaded in unstable and disco. We need to SRU them to cosmic.
      - Ubuntu dock/launcher is shown on the lock screen: WIP - I’m able to reproduce a variant of it in Bionic
  • Disco:
    • NetworkManager IPv6 DAD lifetime behavior introduce security risk: I had no time to work on this this week.

---

• Merged/Uploaded
• Under review
• Waiting for review
• Rejected

[robert.ancell]

• Add new error codes to snapd-glib.
• Support maintenance information returned from snapd.
• Support app filtering in snapd-glib.

• Updated snapd REST API documentation.
• Wrote a blog post about some code analysis in GNOME Settings.
• Checked gnome-software crash reports that are holding up phased updates in 16.04 and 18.04.
• Completed new sound panel implementation - now awaiting reviews.
• Verified gnome-software SRU bug.
• Contacted some snap publishers about adding metadata to their snaps.
• Wrote some snap reviews
• Found out that ODRS doesn’t support reviews with emoji.
• GNOME Software stakeholders meeting.

Release bugs:

• 1552792 - SRU verified, awaiting release.
• 1719797 - SRU verified, awaiting release.
• 1798228 - SRU verified, awaiting release.
• 1785240 - SRU verified, awaiting release.
• 1798470 - SRU verified, awaiting release.
• 1799614 - Awaiting snapd 2.36 release to implement.

[jibel]

• New installer
  • Modified desktop seeds to add a new ubuntu-desktop-minimal
  • Replied to comment on MP 358490
  • Added support for snap to multi layer images (MP 358840)
  • Adding support for l10n to multi layer images and broke daily images (no localization on live session)
  • Had fun with bzr-git (Thanks @didrocks)
  • Tested Daily Disco.

[kenvandine]

• Created ubuntudesktop/gnome-3-28-1804 docker container based on ubuntu/bionic with snapcraft from candidate capable of building snaps with bases
• build snap
  • Updated gnome-3-28-1804-sdk to use core18
  • Updated CI to build with new ubuntudesktop/gnome-3-28-1804 docker container
  • build fixes, the build snap now builds properly in gitlab CI
• gtk-common-themes
  • Fixed sound theme issue
  • Updated snap to use a version-script so we can properly track versions in use
• Working on a PR for snapcraft adding VAPIDIR and VALAFLAGS handling

no rls bugs

[vanvugt]

Gnome Shell performance (stutter | latency | CPU):

• Merged the new latency and skipping fixes into a single branch, since they are tightly coupled. I think that may be one of the most important performance fixes needed by Ubuntu right now, and upstream Nvidia users need it too.
• Reworked the final pollish for the icon spring animation with one tiny additional optimization. Although the animation was performing well enough to declare it fixed without that already (1, 2).
• Redesigned the new CPU optimization that avoids sending mouse movements to JavaScript, and its prerequisite, in response to reviews.
• Fixed conformance tests on the old desktop zoom (offscreen-effect) fix. They just got switched on recently.
• Many ongoing updates; rebasing and retesting other performance fixes still awaiting review, so that they all now have a nice green tick for tests passed.
• The big high CPU regression fix has now been released to Ubuntu 19.04. Next, Cosmic requires the same fix. It is not required in Bionic.
• The main icon spring smoothness fix was backported upstream to gnome-shell version 3.30.2. So it should appear in Ubuntu soonish(?).

Gnome Shell other bugs:

• Wrote a fix for gradient background rendering in order to fully solve the Yaru theme login animation flicker. Turns out mutter’s gradient background feature never actually worked properly (it’s different code to that used by the login screen).
• While in the area for above, also wrote a fix for the jaggies when wallpapers are much higher resolution than the screen.

Bug management:

• Backlogs progress:
  • Good news (falling backlogs): xorg
  • Bad news (consistently growing backlogs): ubiquity and xorg-server, as usual.

[didrocks]

Worked with Jean-Baptiste on the installer:

• Modified desktop seeds to add new ubuntu-minimal metapackage & seed. (implied seed, tasksels and some system/archive debugging…)
• Add snap support to layered squashfs. MP opened (see jibel’s link)
• Reorgnanized seeds for locale & langpacks, one seed per default language (minimal/full install), with a metatasks. This will enable us to do negative delta. Note that this regression current desktop disco image (no langpacks included anymore). Potential fix proposed, we’ll look into it.
• Replied to comments on first layered MP. Still waiting for more feedbacks.
• Had a lot of fun, after multiple rebase, with bzr-git

Misc:

• Look at some Yaru build failures, seems a new snapcraft feature make it FTBFS when rebuilding gtk-common-parts. Fixed by now.
• Reviewed upstream os-infodb for 18.10 isos.

No rls bug assigned left.

[laney]

• Spent most of the week merging nautilus up to 3.30.1 - this involved understanding our extensive set of patches… I’ve dropped some of them and ported a few others, but it still doesn’t build for me yet. Once it does I’ll post a thread on here with a status report, because some of the Unity patches are ones I dropped and they’ll need updating if they are to be carried over (& there’s the desktop situation of course)
  • contributed a great fix
• appstream-generator has started falling over regularly, not sure why - I keep getting paged (phone call / email / SMS!) about it and need to log on to kill it. Should look into that …
• Tried to help a little bit with getting gjs to migrate in Debian, so that they are on mozjs60 and it’s not blocked any more. Still some work to do there.
  • tested/synced gjs 1.54.3
• some random discussions like giving advice on seed changes

no rls bugs

[oSoMoN]

firefox

• prepared 63.0.3 update (in disco-proposed, and in ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa)

chromium

• updated stable to 70.0.3538.102 (in disco and in stage PPA)
• iterating on the !amd64 snap build issue, found a way to trigger the issue without actually building chromium, in ~3 hours (instead of ~30 hours when building chromium), still digging

libreoffice

• tested 6.1.3 snap in candidate channel and promoted to stable
• investigated bug #1802208 (reports won’t open in bionic/xenial)
• rebuilt snap against core18, tested, and iterating to trim the fat

rls-bb-tracking bugs

• bug #1754671 in network-manager: upstream fix was backported to the 1.10 series, which unblocks the resolution of this bug
• bug #1795169 in firefox: some progress in understanding the problem, found similarities with other bugs related to password fields and ibus
• bug #1799230 in libreoffice: still in bionic unapproved queue
• bug #1802208 in libreoffice: spent quite some time investigating, haven’t found a working solution yet

rls-cc-tracking bugs

• bug #1803142 in libreoffice: need to prepare the SRU

[seb128]

• one vac day
• upstreamed a plymouth assert error
• disco updates: libdazzle libsoup gvfs
• SRUed some totem fixes to bionic (segfault in the nautilus properties dialog & gallery plugin not working)
• sponsored the update-notifier formatting/W504 fixes from andy
• backported some gvfs fixes for a bionic SRU, SRU the current version to cosmic
• launchpad bugs triaging

rls bugs, the 3 bugs are fix commited/SRUed/waiting for SRU verification

[3v1n0]

GNOME Shell (and mutter)

• Some discussions on double-events for touch
• Lots of fixes for mutter default focus window (and crashes fixes)
  • Wrote a test case for relative crash (we’d need for SRU verification)
• Updates to resource-scale branch for mutter and gnome-shell
• Wrote a blueprint for fractional scaling using xrandr in X11
  • Hacked the code of mutter, getting it scaling properly the outputs (actually biggest item in the week )
  • Found a X11 crash, debugged and proposed a fix for it.

GNOME and friends

• Some fixes to libnotify meson branch
• Updates to g_(s)autolist for G_DECLARE'd types, now merged, and opened an issue for standard types
• Added more g_auto* macros to GLib

SRUs

• Some verifications on gnome-shell (landed now!)
• Prepared a SRU for libgweather (causing g-s crash) [git branch here needs review and ownership change]
• Nautilus errors checks

[till-kamppeter]

My week:

• cups: Synced 2.2.9 from Debian.
• cups-filters: Fixed multiple copies printing on driverless IPP printers in pdftopdf. Now the correct number of copies is printed.
• cups-filters: Applied contributed patches for compatibility with newest Poppler and for correct handling of timeouts (to avoid cupsd taking up all CPU)
• OpenPrinting: Introduced person from Canon to uploading PostScript printer PPD files.
• OpenPrinting web site: Continued coordination of web site renovation.
• Bugs.

Till

[jamesh]

fontconfig:

• I backported the cache file naming changes from 2.13 to Bionic’s fontconfig here: bug 1803534

snapd gnome search providers

• I’ve been working on updating my systemd user units PR, and porting over more of the D-Bus activation code to build on top of this. Still more work to do.

Yaru:

• Yaru PR #952 was merged, which should marginally improve performance of the theme by bundling all the resources into a single memory mappable file.