[yocto] Switch to GTK+3

[Jussi Kukkonen]

On 16 June 2016 at 15:44, Gary Thomas <gary at mlbassoc.com> wrote:
>
> I just tried a build from the latest Poky/Yocto master (2a85038dd)
> Overall, I think the switch to GTK+3 is an improvement, but I have
> a number of [usability] questions:

It's a tricky upgrade, essentially upgrading a major part of an operating
system from a version five years old version to a current one. I am sorry
for the inconvenience.

> * I built firefox from meta-browser and noticed that on my touch only
> device, it does not automatically pop-up the keyboard.  However, epiphany
> does.  I've only done a little testing but that's what I observed.  Not
> having this happen "on demand" (i.e. when a text field has the focus)
> will make using a full screen application impossible on this hardware.

I assume this is still the Gtk2 firefox? There is a Gtk3 version released
recently I believe.

Before the recent changes, Gtk+2 applications were the only thing supported
by the virtual keyboard.

Now, the default configuration is to build only support for Gtk+3 but it is
possible to support also Gtk+2 by adding "gtk2-im" into the
matchbox-keyboard PACKAGECONFIG. This is not done by default to prevent the
keyboard from bringing gtk+ into the image if nothing else requires it.

> * Also on firefox, I can't seem to get the vertical scrollbar to work.
> Again, with epiphany it at least works.

This is slightly surprising if firefox is a gtk+2 application. The only
thing that really changed with the GTK2 stack is the theme... but the
current one (gnome-theme-adwaita from gnome-themes-standard) is the GNOME
default so I'd expect it work. I have no suggestions here, Sorry.

> * The system also doesn't seem to play very nice with my GPU enhanced
> i.MX6 and causes the SoC to overheat (didn't happen with GTK+2).  Makes
> it rather unusable as well.

Eek. That sounds like a driver problem. The new Gtk is more demanding on
graphics drivers but not by a huge difference.

> * gtk-play ran my 1GB system out of memory, just starting up :-(  This
> caused a complete system lockup & I could not even restart the X server.
> This application also seemed to run quite well with GTK+2

gst-player did go through some refactoring (the library parts are now in
gst-plugins-bad) so new bugs are not impossible. It's unlikely that the Gtk
upgrade itself would have this kind of effects, but maybe this is related
to the previous problem -- wherever the root cause is.

> * There also seem to be a continuous stream of messages like these on the
console:
>
>   GLib-GIO-Message: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend.  Your settings
will not be saved or shared with other applications.
>   Gtk-Message: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is
discouraged.

The messages as such are not problematic, assuming there's no flood of them.

GSettings is still something we might want to bring in (as a replacement
for GConf which is deprecated), but that means a little porting work on
matchbox components. The GtkDialog message is probably from gtk-play and
should not be an issue.

Hope this helps,
  Jussi



> I know that these firefox vs. epiphany vs. chome vs. ... questions
> are not really the responsibility of Yocto or OE-core, but it does
> trickle down to those of us trying to use this framework.
>
> Many thanks for any thoughts
>
> n.b. I was torn what mailing list to use for this - it's tightly
> tied to OE-core, but isn't really about patches or changes, more
> about philosophy.  If the OE-core list is more appropriate, please
> move the replies there.
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
> MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> --
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> yocto at yoctoproject.org
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