This week I present a summary for two weeks as I had unfortunatelly no possibility to write the summary last week. Of course the main event in this two weeks has been the release of 4.9.0 and as always this triggered quite a flow of new bug reports. Since the release on August 1st 38 bugs have been reported against KWin and an additional nine KWin related duplicate crash reports ended in systemsettings. What is really sad is that we have a duplicate rate of 47 % since the release. Many of the often reported bugs are easy to find and easy to trigger regressions compared to 4.8. This makes me really sad, not because we released with regression, but because such issues could have been spotted and fixed during the beta testing phase. My wish for 4.10 is that more users test the beta releases and report issues.
The most often reported bug since the release is unfortunately a crash in the window decorations configuration module. This is a very nasty bug and interestingly the reason for this crash is in my opinion just lack of communication. In 4.9 we changed the API of KDecorationUnstable, as the name says that is an Unstable API. We ensured that an incompatible decoration would not be loaded and does neither crash KWin nor the decoration module. Unfortunately we did not inform the distributions about the change. One distribution recognized that there is an ABI incompatible change and seems to have done what they use to do in such cases: change the ABI version of the package. The result was that also for the stable decorations the ABI changed. We were not prepared for such a case and did not expect incompatibilities in the stable API. The result is that the configuration module crashes in case a user has a 3rd party decoration installed which has not been compiled again with the new ABI. Overall the problem could have been easily prevented before by better communication. We should have informed the distributions and the distribution should have contacted us to clarify what to do.
Summary
Crash Fixes
- 304340: segfault on exiting cube effect
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit - 304870: kwin crash when maximizing window when using Aurorae and BorderlessMaximizedWindows
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit
Bug Fixes
- 304248: Wheel operations on title bar not functional
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit - 302783: In kde 4.9 rc1 some opengl fullscreen games dont work correctly, by not going fullscreen
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit - 304253: The «bounce» cursor effect when starting a program is not bouncing anymore
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit - 304520: flip switch incorrectly aligns window height on multiple monitors
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit - 304564: blur effect does not work when the dashboard is first invoked
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit - 304249: Long delay when moving window through title bar
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit - 304799: kwindecoration kcm is broken when using a touchpad
This change will be available in version 4.9.1
Git Commit
Good work, as always Mister Gräßlin…
Thank you !
These kind of reports are really interesting. Maybe you could convince a few more KDE guys to start something like this?
Thanks for your work.
You mention “We should have informed the distributions and the distribution should have contacted us to clarify what to do.”, but not what that “to do” part is. Mind clarifying? (here or on kde-packager list is fine)
what I mean is a distro notice an ABI break. In 9 of 10 cases that’s hopefully a bug. Not contacting the developers means it is not going to be fixed although it should have been fixed or if the ABI break is intended the so-version should be increased. That is something which should happen upstream and not downstream.
Please note that any discussion on kde-packagers between distributions does not reach the developers. The list is still invite only and archives member-read-only. So I have no idea whether the issue had been discussed at all.
hopefully more automated test suites to catch such regressions soon. Here’s hoping for every regression you find, you can find a way of writing a regression test.
only small subsets of KWin can be unit tested at the moment and I doubt that this will change any time soon (no idea yet how to unit test effects or the interaction between effects).
An issue on the notification system. When you are working on the system such as navigating on a menu and then simultaneously appears a new notification popup, what you were doing closes losing focus and you have to start again! It’s annoying.
I have not found reports about it. Is there a way to do that notifications do not make lose focus of what you were doing?
Thank you and sorry for post this issue here in your blog 🙂
you can of course post it here, but it results in reaching the wrong people and nobody taking care of it. Sorry I’m not involved with notifications.
> My wish for 4.10 is that more users test the beta releases and report issues.
There is a number of problems with this:
– Most users don’t know how to compile and install KDE from source.
– Binary packages are not available for most distributions. Eg, Debian doesn’t even have 4.9 in sid. Even if a binary packages is available for your distribution, it may be patched or improperly configured, so that bugs present in the package may not be present in the upstream version or vice versa.
– Most users don’t want to screw up their installation by installing a large number of possibly unstable packages. Eg mixing stable with sid in Debian easily results in a broken system.
So, unless there is an easy and safe way for end users to participate in beta testing, this situation is unlikely to change. Suggestion: Team up with a major linux distribution and provide a reference KDE implementation on a live CD.
for all these comments: http://dot.kde.org/2012/07/24/introducing-project-neon-kvm