GNOME: 43 → 44

[jtojnar]

Announcement: https://discourse.gnome.org/t/gnome-44-released/14606
Release notes: https://release.gnome.org/44/

• Schedule: https://wiki.gnome.org/FortyFour
• Project: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/projects/53
• Hydra: https://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixpkgs/gnome (evaluations need to be triggered manually)
• Previous bump: GNOME 42 → 43 #182618
• Tool for reviewing changelogs: https://github.com/jtojnar/nonemast

How can you help

• Review unreviewed updates with https://github.com/jtojnar/nonemast

  1. Read the changelog for anything mentioning dependencies or anything else that could affect packaging
  2. Check the diff for changes in meson.build files (look especially for changes including dependency and for find_program functions)
  3. If there are packaging changes required, update the expression and commit changes as a fixup commit.
  4. Click “Mark as reviewed” button to create an empty review commit
  5. If you can, push your commits to this branch, otherwise Open a pull request against this branch.

• Create build fixes for packages that fail to build (same as steps 3–5 above)

• Pickup an issue from the TODO list and fix it

• Try running the GNOME config in a VM (e.g. with the config below, you can do nixos-rebuild build-vm -I nixos-config=gnome-config.nix -I nixpkgs=$PWD && ./result/bin/run-*-vm)

  Example VM config

  { pkgs, config, ... }: {
    environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
      gdb
      binutils # readelf
      file
      htop
      less
      ashpd-demo # Testing portals
      # For debug symbols
      glib
      gnome.gnome-session
      gnome.mutter
      gnome.gnome-shell
      packagekit
    ];
    # services.gnome.core-utilities.enable = false;
    # services.gnome.core-developer-tools.enable = true;
    # services.gnome.games.enable = true;
    services.fwupd.enable = true;
  
    environment.enableDebugInfo = true;
    services.xserver = {
      enable = true;
      # layout = "cz";
      # xkbVariant = "qwerty";
  
      displayManager.gdm = {
        enable = true;
        debug = true;
      };
      desktopManager.gnome = {
        enable = true;
        debug = true;
      };
    };
    services.openssh.enable = true;
  
    virtualisation.forwardPorts = [
      # forward local port 2222 -> 22, to ssh into the VM
      { from = "host"; host.port = 2222; guest.port = 22; }
    ];
  
    console.useXkbConfig = true;
    i18n = {
      defaultLocale = "en_GB.UTF-8";
    };
  
    programs.gpaste.enable = true;
  
    users.extraUsers.jtojnar = {
      isNormalUser = true;
      uid = 1000;
      extraGroups = [ "wheel" "networkmanager" ];
      password = "";
      openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [ "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDYbOlZydfRRCGCT08wdtPcpfSrgxMc6weDx3NcWrnMpVgxnMs3HozzkaS/hbcZUocn7XbCOyaxEd1O8Fuaw4JXpUBcMetpPXkQC+bZHQ3YsZZyzVgCXFPRF88QQj0nR7YVE1AeAifjk3TCODstTxit868V1639/TVIi5y5fC0/VbYG2Lt4AadNH67bRv8YiO3iTsHQoZPKD1nxA7yANHCuw38bGTHRhsxeVD+72ThbsYSZeA9dBrzACpEdnwyXclaoyIOnKdN224tu4+4ytgH/vH/uoUfL8SmzzIDvwZ4Ba2yHhZHs5iwsVjTvLe7jjE6I1u8qY7X8ofnanfNcsmz/ jtojnar@kaiser" ];
    };
  
    imports = [ <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/virtualisation/qemu-vm.nix> ];
    virtualisation.memorySize = 3 * 2048;
    virtualisation.diskSize = 28048;
    virtualisation.qemu.options = [ "-device intel-hda" "-device hda-duplex" ];
  
    environment.etc."modprobe.d/floppy.blacklist.conf".text = ''
      blacklist floppy
    '';
  }

• Try switching your system to this branch:

  • Pass -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/refs/heads/gnome.tar.gz flag to nixos-rebuild
  • With flakes, nix flake update --override-input nixpkgs github:NixOS/nixpkgs/gnome

• Comment with issues you found.

Main pain points

• GLib removed unmaintained slab allocator, which revealed ton of memory management issues.
  • If you are still on a system with GLib < 2.75.3, you can check if a program is affected with

    $ export G_SLICE=always-malloc
    $ some-application # does it crash now?

    or just set this globally in your nixos config

    {
      environment.sessionVariables."G_SLICE" = "always-malloc";
    }

[jtojnar]

I pushed a workaround for the test failure (verified pre-rebase), I want to merge this ASAP so that we can get as much people testing the GLib slice allocator fallout before branch-off as possible.

I would not block on the tracker issue, I do not think we support 32-bit platforms. if it is problematic for aarch64, we can disable the tests there, from the patch, it looks like it should not affect runtime.

Edit(bobby285271): There is some quick discussion in #gnome:nixos.org for this.

[vcunat]

tracker tests also have issues on aarch64-linux: https://hydra.nixos.org/build/215237988

Edit(jtojnar): Fixed in 5c10f40

[vcunat]

gtk4 started to fail on darwin: https://hydra.nixos.org/build/215254265
(though I don't consider that important)

[jtojnar]

Looks like it is macOS 10.13+. Thought that should be fixed with https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/commit/7c9bc7a2049f985a206a8da8250e3d958368bb09

cc @NixOS/darwin-maintainers

[bobby285271]

This probably compiles: bobby285271@1e2ccb0, but I have no way to test it other than building on github-actions.

Edit 1: I filed https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5738

Edit 2: After checking the attempt in conda-forge/gtk4-feedstock#35, I decided for use of undeclared identifier 'NSPasteboardTypeURL', this will be more simple:

-        [ret addObject:NSPasteboardTypeURL];
+        [ret addObject:PTYPE(URL)];

Though I expect both way should do the same job (#define PTYPE(k) (get_pasteboard_type(TYPE_##k)))

[vcunat]

Does compile for me on x86_64-darwin.

[vcunat]

Pushed as 96fb05e

[vcunat]

newsflash can't cope with the webkitgtk upgrade. Maintainers: @kira-bruneau, @Stunkymonkey

Edit(bobby285271): More info & fix -> https://gitlab.com/news-flash/news_flash_gtk/-/issues/416
Edit 2: 5996268

[vcunat]

Same with webkit2-sharp. Maintainer: @kevincox

[kira-bruneau]

@vcunat & @bobby285271 Thanks for the heads up! It think we can just use the webkit-6 patch until the next version is released.

[bobby285271]

For webkit2-sharp, I filed hbons/webkit2-sharp#6.

For now replacing parentInstance here to parent seems to work. Though that sounds like a generated file and I am not sure if this is actually a breaking change for 4.0.

Edit: 029a32f

[buckley310]

Is anyone successfully using the new "background apps" feature? It's not showing up for me.

Aside from usual apps like Steam, I tested it with amberol since I've seen screenshots with that app using the feature.

Testing on nixos-unstable fe2ecaf, using X11, all extensions disabled.

[dimitarg]

@buckley310 Same here. I was operating under the impression that feature is (currently) limited to flatpak-installed apps, and that's why I don't see it.

[pennae]

this seems to have broken ibus emoji entry, bisect points to 8e5ee715d12efa8fe3d1071d83c141a6a03d328a. at this commit ibus can no longer properly enumerate and display emoji, giving only a selection of Favourites and arbitrary unicode choice (which itself only lists U+FFFFFFFF three times). ancestor commit works fine. reverting isn't feasible since more updates have happened since, and other packages require the newer glib version.

[lilyinstarlight]

@pennae, see #226526