Thread: [java-gnome-hackers] libappindicator and libindicate support

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java-gnome-hackers

[java-gnome-hackers] libappindicator and libindicate support

From: Francisco O. <fr...@pu...> - 2010-05-28 02:00:54

Hi everybody,

First of all I want to thank for the huge effort you are doing 
delivering java bindings for gnome.

I am developing a little java app just for fun and I am using the 
binding for libnotify provided for java-gnome project.

As an Ubuntu user I want my app to support the new indicators 
(complementing the lack of 'actions' support for ubuntu notification 
system) based on the Ayatana umbrella project , so I read the docs get a 
copy of java-gnome src from the ubuntu repository (didn't use bzr way, 
but is the next step)  and started hacking the bindings. After 3 days of 
work I have working bindings for libindicate 
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MessagingMenu/> and libappindicator 
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopExperienceTeam/ApplicationIndicators>.

I want to share with you what i did (i read the style, hacking, and docs 
and i am in process to document all the API) and i have a couple of 
questions:

In configure (and in build/faster) I added the package dependencies 
under debian OS (shared with Ubuntu) but i think is not the best 
solution. The previous dependencies are Ubuntu specific, but I dont want 
to break the code of the project if you are not using Ubuntu. Even in 
Ubuntu I don't know if the libs are required.

- How should I handle optional libraries for optional bindings? Or maybe 
I need to implement some kind of fallback implementation?

- By default the generated code is under org.gnome.<libname> package but 
i dont know if its a valid package. I dont know the state I was 
inspecting the DBus messages and they are using org.ayatana or 
org.freedesktop namespaces, there is a ticket in the launchpad 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/libindicate/+bug/452165 regarding this. 
Suggestions?

Thanks in advance for the answers,

Regards

Fran

Re: [java-gnome-hackers] libappindicator and libindicate support

From: Serkan K. <se...@ge...> - 2010-05-28 02:54:27

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Hash: SHA1

On 28-05-2010 05:00, Francisco Ortiz wrote:
> As an Ubuntu user I want my app to support the new indicators
> (complementing the lack of 'actions' support for ubuntu notification
> system) based on the Ayatana umbrella project , so I read the docs get a
> copy of java-gnome src from the ubuntu repository (didn't use bzr way,
> but is the next step)  and started hacking the bindings. After 3 days of
> work I have working bindings for libindicate
> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MessagingMenu/> and libappindicator
> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopExperienceTeam/ApplicationIndicators>.
> 
> I want to share with you what i did (i read the style, hacking, and docs
> and i am in process to document all the API) and i have a couple of
> questions:
Great, well done. Feel free to send a bundle against mainline.
> 
> In configure (and in build/faster) I added the package dependencies
> under debian OS (shared with Ubuntu) but i think is not the best
> solution. The previous dependencies are Ubuntu specific, but I dont want
> to break the code of the project if you are not using Ubuntu. Even in
> Ubuntu I don't know if the libs are required.
> 
> - How should I handle optional libraries for optional bindings? Or maybe
> I need to implement some kind of fallback implementation?
In any case, even if the dependencies are not checked for other distros
it would be a problem in build stage because java-gnome currently
doesn't support optional dependencies. By the way is this library going
to stay being Ubuntu specific.
> 
> - By default the generated code is under org.gnome.<libname> package but
> i dont know if its a valid package. I dont know the state I was
> inspecting the DBus messages and they are using org.ayatana or
> org.freedesktop namespaces, there is a ticket in the launchpad
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/libindicate/+bug/452165 regarding this.
> Suggestions?
This package name generation is java-gnome specific, you can leave it to
default. That bug is probably about exported dbus objects which we don't
care at bindings level.

- -- 
Sincerely,
Serkan KABA
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Re: [java-gnome-hackers] libappindicator and libindicate support

From: Guillaume M. <res...@gm...> - 2010-05-28 13:03:59

Hello,

> In any case, even if the dependencies are not checked for other distros
> it would be a problem in build stage because java-gnome currently
> doesn't support optional dependencies. By the way is this library going
> to stay being Ubuntu specific.
No these libraries are not Ubuntu specific but they depend on the
distros packagers of course.

But they should absolutly not be required to build java-gnome or any
kinds of programs (in C people use #ifdef things to know if the code
should compile with appindicator/libindicate support).

I thought about adding support for those libraries (well Francisco was
faster than me :D) but I was stucking on "they should be optional not
required".

-- 
Guillaume Mazoyer - http://www.respawner.fr/

Re: [java-gnome-hackers] optional dependencies (was Re: ...)

From: Andrew C. <an...@op...> - 2010-05-29 01:46:38

On Fri, 2010-05-28 at 15:03 +0200, Guillaume Mazoyer wrote:
> But they should absolutely not be required to build java-gnome or any
> kinds of programs (in C people use #ifdef things to know if the code
> should compile with appindicator/libindicate support).

Yeah. java-gnome isn't really very good at that right now, partly
because

a) Java the language isn't very good at that

        [and that's ok; no #ifdef is a feature, not a bug :). Actually,
        Java is very good at it - if you don't depend on it, you don't
        import it. But the code in scope needs to compile]

b) philosophically, I didn't want to maintain a project where people
wouldn't know whether what they needed would be there or not.

        [There's nothing worse than you installing something only to
        discover (eg) your Cairo doesn't have PDF support. "Like, what
        the fuck, man?" with my best 70s California surfer dude
        accent :). We just depend on Cairo, and expect it to work.
        People should be able to depend on java-gnome, and know what
        they're getting]

c) java-gnome depends on GNOME; so, if you've got a Desktop installed
you by definition have all the prerequisites.

        [Done. No fuss, no muss, and makes sense given the limited time
        we all have to spend on things like this. It's also why I've
        kept it 1 package and not 9]

> I was stuck on "they should be optional not
> required".

d) we haven't implemented out the infrastructure and mechanisms for
optionally depending on individual libraries.

This is where it gets interesting. This *IS* something we have been
thinking about for a long time and have a fairly good idea of what we
need to do to support it.

For example, I'd rather like to see us have a webkit-gtk binding, and
James even worked on one a bit, but (especially a few years ago) it was
completely unreasonable to expect a normal user of release or 'mainline'
would have it available.

But it's really hard. The build system assumes all the sources will
compile.

        [What an amazing thought!]

So if we put in code that depends on things $you don't have on your
system, then boom java-gnome won't build.

So we'd need to change that. Fair bit of work. Also, top level configure
would also have to be taught what to do when it looks for something and
doesn't find it. Another big piece of work, though that's more doable.

Then we need to build the library such that it only links against the
things you actually have (so it completes the build, hey). That's a bit
more engineering. Getting trickier.

The usual approach to these problems is to make many libraries instead
of one. In java-gnome it wouldn't be *too* hard to load a bunch of
lib{glib,gtk,webkitgtk,...}jni-4.0.so; presumably we'd just do it one
loadLibrary() per module in the Plumbing class. So we'd need to arrange
that, then arrange to link the individual .so files instead of one big
one. That is all doable, but it's a LOT of work.

++

My take on it as maintainer is that we're still better off having just
one top level .jar file (which for historical reasons is called gtk.jar)
because Java only loads what you import and it doesn't matter a whit if
*EVERYTHING* is in that .jar, and it's a pain in the ass having to add >
1 to your IDE, run scripts, etc.

If the library itself then quietly internally then loads 10 - 15 .so
files rather than the 1 .so file it's loading now, then I guess that'd
be ok.

        [purists would complain about the cost of all the extra dynamic
        libraries, but I'm not so sure that in a land of Java on top of
        GTK that # of .so files is our biggest worry. Still, right now
        we have 1 and that's acceptable in anyone's books]

Since supporting experimental or obscure (indicator is "obscure in the
sense that no one but Ubuntu users will ever have it) would be really
excellent, it'd be worth doing the work to implement it.

It'll take hacking on configure, the build system, the Plumbing classes,
and knowing a lot about how linking works ... essentially, everything
there is to know about java-gnome :)

Big piece of work, but if we want to go there, I'm happy to help.

AfC
Sydney

Re: [java-gnome-hackers] libappindicator and libindicate support

From: Francisco O. <fr...@pu...> - 2010-05-30 16:40:00

Attachments: ubuntu-indicate-support.patch

Hi again.

Putting some code where my mouth is I am sending patch against mainline.
I modified configure and faster to support the libs, tested with Ubuntu 
10.04.
I added the defs and bindings for libappindicator and libindicate and an 
example for libindicate.

Comments, suggestions and patches are very welcome.

Regards,

Francisco

> Hello,
>
>    
>> In any case, even if the dependencies are not checked for other distros
>> it would be a problem in build stage because java-gnome currently
>> doesn't support optional dependencies. By the way is this library going
>> to stay being Ubuntu specific.
>>      
> No these libraries are not Ubuntu specific but they depend on the
> distros packagers of course.
>
> But they should absolutly not be required to build java-gnome or any
> kinds of programs (in C people use #ifdef things to know if the code
> should compile with appindicator/libindicate support).
>
> I thought about adding support for those libraries (well Francisco was
> faster than me :D) but I was stucking on "they should be optional not
> required".
>
>    
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>    
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> java-gnome-hackers mailing list
> jav...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/java-gnome-hackers
>

Re: [java-gnome-hackers] libappindicator and libindicate support

From: Serkan K. <se...@ge...> - 2010-05-31 06:14:45

2010/5/28 Guillaume Mazoyer <res...@gm...>:

> But they should absolutly not be required to build java-gnome or any
> kinds of programs (in C people use #ifdef things to know if the code
> should compile with appindicator/libindicate support).
There's JEnable (http://www.sosnoski.com/opensrc/jenable/index.html)
for Java and I've also seen an example of using cpp (c preprocessor)
on Java files but is either of them an option?

Regards,
Serkan

Re: [java-gnome-hackers] libappindicator and libindicate support

From: Guillaume M. <res...@gm...> - 2010-06-27 11:58:17

I was thinking about that appindicator/libindicate support again. I
guess that the best way to cover these things in Java would be to create
a specific binding which would depend on java-gnome.

In this way, it would not add optional things to java-gnome (which is
something I'd like) but it would not benefit from the awesome
architecture of java-gnome.

Le lundi 31 mai 2010 à 09:14 +0300, Serkan Kaba a écrit :
> 2010/5/28 Guillaume Mazoyer <res...@gm...>:
> 
> > But they should absolutly not be required to build java-gnome or any
> > kinds of programs (in C people use #ifdef things to know if the code
> > should compile with appindicator/libindicate support).
> There's JEnable (http://www.sosnoski.com/opensrc/jenable/index.html)
> for Java and I've also seen an example of using cpp (c preprocessor)
> on Java files but is either of them an option?
> 
> Regards,
> Serkan
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> java-gnome-hackers mailing list
> jav...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/java-gnome-hackers

-- 
Guillaume Mazoyer - http://www.respawner.fr/