Hi all,
I was listening in on the last irc meeting and caught an aftermeeting
mentioning about bad Qt4 performance. I offered an article and a possible
workaround I found recently, in case people are not aware of it, and was
asked to bring it to attention to other developers also, so here goes:
I'm suffering bad graphical performance in Qt4 and PyQt4 applications and
searched for solutions. I found a post on nokia.com [1] that mentions a
command line switch that might help.
In short: adding "-graphicssystem raster" to my Qt4 applications' command line
improved performance drastically for me. There's also a method to set it
programmatically, and an environment variable [2].
[1] http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2008/10/22/so-long-and-thanks-for-the-blit/
[2] http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7/qapplication.html#setGraphicsSystem
Thanks and much regards,
Sanne
Or: "Lions and tigers and ebuilds, oh my!"
Yes, I know there are no official packages for Gentoo yet. I decided to see
if I could do something useful by installing what unofficial ones were available
and probing for bugs, and possibly rolling a few ebuilds of my own for the
packages that haven't gotten any love yet. I used non7top's GitHub fork of
Serghei's ebuild repository (at the time I started, the contents of the two were
identical, actually) and did manage to get kdebase installed after two ebuild-
related hiccups.
After that, things started to get complicated, and I ran into a variety of
problems. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to decide whether some of
them are Trinity bugs, ebuild bugs, or just Gentoo quirks, so I don't know
where to file them and need help with the triage.
__________________
Problem #1: Unset environment variables
When I first booted Trinity, the desktop *appeared* to come up exactly as
it should, but most applications would not start, the main menu was nearly
empty, and kcontrol had no settings available. After some mucking around,
I discovered that there was no mention of the Trinity bin directory in my
PATH, and then found that Gentoo set PATH, ROOTPATH, LDPATH, and
XDG_DATA_DIRS inside a distro-specific part of starkde (for KDE 3.5.10,
that is), so I copy-and-pasted those into the startup file provided. (I know
there are some setters in the Trinity startup script. They didn't work,
possibly because of Problem #4.)
Unfortunately, that didn't fix things--I also needed to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH
for programs (including konsole) to start properly, and XDG_DATA_HOME,
XDG_CONFIG_HOME, and/or XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (I never tried setting
them individually, so I can't narrow it down) to get a working menu and kcontrol.
I don't know what changed between KDE 3.5.10 and Trinity 3.5.13 to make
the setting of those additional environment variables necessary, so I'm not
sure who owns the second half of the bug.
__________________
Problem #2: Autotools packages and ebuilds
I did manage to write some successful ebuilds (I have most of kdegraphics and
kdeartwork working, if anyone wants ebuilds for those, plus kdebase-meta and a
variant ksmserver ebuild with a hal useflag), but only for packages that have been
ported to CMake. The autotools packages Will Not Work, no matter how I mangle
the KDE 3.5.10 ebuilds (rewriting from scratch is not an option, IMAO--the old
kde-meta eclass contains several hundred lines of bash script, and spending more
than minimal time on a build system that's going away is wasted effort).
After a lot of playing around with kdetoys, I was able to figure out that I was
running into two problems: a minor change in the tarball structure (not a bug, solved
by a 1-line fix), and a set of missing build/config files. The kdetoys-3.5.10 tarball
contains a bunch of files at the top level that are missing from its 3.5.13 equivalent:
configure.in, acinclude.m4, aclocal.m4, and several other config* and Makefile*
files. When I copied these files from the old to the new package, the ebuild got
as far as actually configuring/building the package (and, naturally, failed, because
the old buildscripts didn't know about TQT, but it was the first iteration that didn't
bail out while trying to find the build directory or run eautoreconf/aclocal).
I know next to nothing about autotools, so I don't know if those files were
removed for a reason. Maybe someone who knows more about autotools
and ebuilds could do something without them; I just know that *I* can't.
Another thing is that I couldn't seem to get the --without-arts switch to work,
but with the ebuilds so messed up to begin with it's difficult to tell whether
that's meaningful.
__________________
Problem #3: CMake failures
Ebuilds for two subapplications of kdeutils that were included in the stuff I took from
GitHub failed to build, complaining that they weren't able to find tqt.h (one of them would
have been Ark). I don't know whether this is an ebuild or a CMake bug.
__________________
Problem #4: startkde/starttrinity and minimal or unusual builds
While I was wrestling with Problem #1 above, I had occasion to examine both
the new and the old startup scripts in detail, and there were some things in the
new one that drew my attention. However, I'm not sure they really qualify as bugs:
if [ -d /opt/trinity/games ]; then
That, and the lines that follow it, might work fine if Trinity is installed into
/opt/trinity/, but Gentoo's practice is to install most software into /usr/.
Something like:
if [ -d ${KDEDIR}/games ]; then
might be more portable.
# Make sure a default wallpaper is set.
if [ ! -e $kdehome/share/config/kdesktoprc ]; then
# With Trinity this file should exist, but test first.
if [ -r /usr/share/wallpapers/isadora.png.desktop ]; then
cat >$kdehome/share/config/kdesktoprc <<EOF
[Desktop0]
Wallpaper=isadora.png
WallpaperMode=Scaled
EOF
fi
fi
Not having a wallpaper set is harmless--these lines seem to add complexity to
the script for no good reason (and I don't have a /usr/share/wallpapers, either--
isadora.png is in /usr/kde/3.5/share/wallpapers--so this code isn't portable).
Perhaps it belongs in a distro-specific patch?
# Configuration of the gtk_qt_engine if not already set.
[...]
Trinity will run quite happily without gtk-qt-engine installed, so a test needs
to be made for that (at minimum--I'd relegate this to "distro-specific" too).
# Remove moodin cache if we have a new wallpaper installed, jriddell. Distro-specific.
if [ -d $kdehome/share/apps/ksplash/cache/Moodin/kubuntu ]; then
if [ /usr/share/wallpapers/kubuntu-wallpaper.png -nt $kdehome/share/apps/ksplash/cache/Moodin/kubuntu/ ]; then
rm -rf $kdehome/share/apps/ksplash/cache/Moodin/kubuntu/
fi
fi
This says right out that it's a Kubuntu patch. It doesn't belong in vanilla Trinity.
$KDEDIR/bin/artsshell -q terminate
Arts is another optional component that Trinity can operate without, so it shouldn't
be shut down without testing to see if it's there. Maybe:
if test -e $KDEDIR/bin/artsshell ; then artsshell -q terminate ; fi
(The prelinking stuff isn't in my old startup script either, but I suspect that Gentoo may
have removed it.)
__________________
I think that's everything. The other (minor) bugs I ran into I'm fairly sure I know where
to file.
Just my observations with Slackware 13.1. YMMV. Please feel free to add, edit, qualify, add a workaround, etc.
Should we fine tune this information and post to our wiki?
===================================
Whereas the Trinity developers have worked hard to support KDE 4 compatibility, there are several challenges with running Trinity, KDE 4, and KDE 3 installed on the same multiple user system.
1. Many of the apps use the same file name. The scripts in /etc/profile.d produce conflicting file search paths. Without the appropriate file search path, the file search path highest in the path hierarchy will launch the app, which might not be the correct app.
2. On multiple user systems, the profile.d scripts can’t be arbitrarily disabled because any of the desktop environments might be used.
3. The profile.d scripts cause conflicts with XDG paths, which create the desktop menus. Normally this is not a problem with other desktops such as Xfce, but that is not the case with these three desktops because many apps have the same name. With each profile.d script being sourced, each desktop system menu will show every app from all other desktops. The Trinity developers have hacked a neat trick to tag the KDE 4 apps in the menu, but there is no such support for KDE 3 apps. The hack does not exist for KDE 4 or KDE 3.
4. User-defined menu changes are stored in $HOME/.config/menus and $HOME/.local/applications. As those directories are global to anything the user does, menu changes in one desktop affects the other desktops if a user wants to change desktops. That means conflicts with starting apps.
5. The KDE 3 and Trinity KDM login manager will conflict unless one or the other is disabled (chmod -x). Neither can be used to support the other desktops because of the underlying dependency on each desktop’s respective kdelibs package.
6. The file search path conflicts will introduce multiple autostart directories. Apps in those directories will start for the other desktops too.
A possible work-around to most of these conflicts is to disable all affected profile.d scripts and then modify the xinitrc scripts to source the appropriate profile.d scripts. That might suffice for run level 3, but not run level 4. Run level 4 would require some detailed scripting in the KDM Xsession script to look at the user’s dmrc config file and then source the appropriate profile.d scripts. Yet these work-around won’t resolve any user-defined menu changes.
On single user systems or systems where all users want to use the same desktop, all of this can be avoided by uninstalling the other desktop environments.
===================================
Darrell
I submitted a patch to bug report 388 (http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=388). The patch restores the visibility of the kdesu "Keep password" check box. In TDE, the check box is hard-coded invisible rather than being a function of the kdesu -t parameter as in 3.5.10.
The patch (kdebase/kdesu/kdesu/kdesu.cpp):
================================================
// Try to exec the command with kdesud.
bool keep = !args->isSet("n") && have_daemon;
- bool terminal = true;
+ bool terminal = args->isSet("t");
bool new_dcop = args->isSet("newdcop");
bool withIgnoreButton = args->isSet("ignorebutton");
================================================
Although I suspect many will welcome the patch, there likely will be just as many who will fear being eaten in the dark by grues if this check box is visible.
I dislike the idea of those who want this check box visible to have to always patch the TDE sources in their build scripts.
Is there a way to test who wants this check box visible and those who don't so no build-time patching is required and everybody is happy?
I think the 'buntu family of distros don't use kdesu and instead use kdesudo. Perhaps this patch does not affect those distros. If that is the case then the discussion falls on everybody else.
Ideas?
Darrell
Do we have a check list to help developers/packagers watch for QA problems with packages? I have not seen any. How about we start one?
1. Check two apps in each menu category of the T-Menu to verify the Help file handbook is available.
2. Run a system test looking for broken sym links. (I use a short script I can share.)
3. Do all apps in the T-Menu start?
4. Check the xsession logs for unexpected or unusual errors and messages.
5. Do kdesu/kdesudo work as expected for your distro?
This is just for starters. Please add to this list.
Darrell
Some of my gmail messages are being archived (removed from my inbox but not being deleted) when Kmail checks my gmail account. This only happens when Kmail does it's check, and none of the emails that are being archived are showing up because they aren't in any of my IMAP folders.
I know the archived messages are still there because I can log into gmail's web interface, go to my "All Mail" list, and see the archived messages. When I move them back to my inbox, they will stay there so long as Kmail isn't checking for email.
There is no setting in gmail's settings (either Kmail or the web interface) to do this, nor do they offer any filters that would do this (or at least, I don't have any such filters active in my gmail).
I have checked my IMAP settings in Kmail and gmail web interface. I cannot find any settings that would exhibit this behavior. I do include my inbox (and all the other IMAP folders) in both my serverside and local subscription.
The last detail I can offer is that I'm using cachedimap instead of regular imap.
Is there anything outside of my gmail/IMAP settings that could be causing this?
--
Kristopher Gamrat
Ark Linux webmaster
http://www.arklinux.org/
In my patched startkde script (bug report 675) I include code to automatically migrate a user's existing KDE3 profile directory.
I'm thinking perhaps I move that code to a separate script, say $PREFIX/bin/migratekde3, and source that script in startkde.
That would allow admins and users to run the script as they please and separate maintenance for us. By moving to a separate script we all can test more easily and improve that script without directly impacting startkde. As a separate script testing could be performed in any desktop environment and not just TDE.
Opinions? Yays? Nays?
Darrell
Le mer. 30 nov. 2011 02:06 HNEC, Dr Tony Young a écrit :
>On Wednesday 30 November 2011 09:37:00 ds ds wrote:
>> Is there a build script for Opensuse somewhere ? Even at a work-in-progress
>> state ?
>
>I am assured that there is. :-) It is definitely in progress and I am looking forward to testing
>it.
>Tony
Ok. Where is the web page ?
Dsant
The little things tend to make a difference in our lives. Long ago in this galaxy, a KDE developer decided that being able to specify the number of files in Kate's Most Recently Used (MRU) file list, and to sort the files in the Documents file pane, was "useless crap."
To me those features never were "useless crap." I have missed those features for a long time.
I found the patches where those features were removed.
I am not a C++ coder, not even close. Yet I was able to reverse the patches and add a little "TQT" love.
By golly, the widgets actually appear in Kate! Once again I can set the size of the MRU list to something greater than 10 and sort the file list.
Current Kate 3.5.13 picture:
http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/images/kate-before.png
Patched Kate picture:
http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/images/kate-after.png
The number widget works great. I think some of you will love that restored feature.
Took me a while to realize the sorting option affects the files in the Documents list pane and not in the MRU list. :)
I uploaded the patch to bug report 244.
Woo-hoo! :)
Darrell
