g_clear_object() has been in glib since 2.28, and now g_clear_pointer() has landed in glib master (see bug #674634).
Their typical usage is to implement GObject::dispose, or “goto out” pattern, previously you would write:

void my_dispose (GObject *obj)
{
  MyObject *self = (MyObject *) obj;
  if (self->priv->object != NULL)
    {
      g_object_unref (self->priv->object);
      self->priv->object = NULL;
    }
  if (self->priv->hash != NULL)
    {
      g_hash_table_unref (self->priv->hash);
      self->priv->my_hash = NULL;
    }
  etc...
}

or:

void some_func ()
{
  GHashTable *tmp = NULL;

  ...
  if (error)
    goto out;

  tmp = g_hash_table_new();
  ...

out:
  if (tmp != NULL)
    g_hash_table_unref (tmp);
}

But now those becomes:

void my_dispose (GObject *obj)
{
  MyObject *self = (MyObject *) obj;

  g_clear_object (&self->priv->object);
  g_clear_pointer (&self->priv->hash, g_hash_table_unref);
  etc...
}

or:

void some_func ()
{
  GHashTable *tmp = NULL;

  ...
  if (error)
    goto out;

  tmp = g_hash_table_new();
  ...

out:
  g_clear_pointer (&tmp, g_hash_table_unref);
}

As extra bonus, g_clear_object() and g_clear_pointer() are thread-safe. That means that 2 threads can clear the same pointer at the same time and it will be freed only once. I’ve heard some code needs thread-safe dispose…

Thanks to Simon McVittie for the original idea in telepathy-glib where we had tp_clear_object/pointer for years.

Yesterday I released a new version of my message notification extension for gnome-shell (3.2 and 3.4), to install it or to update it just visit its page on extensions.gnome.org.

The main feature in the new version is that it just handles notifications coming from well-known applications: Empathy, XChat, XChat-GNOME, Pidgin and notify-send. Handling the Empathy notifications is easy because they are well integrated with the shell, but the other notifications required some hack because all the applications handle notifications in different ways. I did my best to make the notifications as useful as possible, similar to the Empathy ones, but there are some small limitations.
Some of the handled applications require plugins to show notification bubbles:

• Pidgin: Click on the “Tools” menu and then “Plug-ins”. Make sure that the “Libnotify Popups” plugin is enabled. If the plugin is not in the list it means you need to install it. On Debian the package is called “pidgin-libnotify”, other distros should have a package with a similar name.
• XChat-GNOME: Click on the “Edit” menu and then “Preferences”. In the “Scripts and Plugins” tab make sure that “On-screen display” is enabled.
• XChat: Click on the “Settings” menu and then “Preferences”. In the “Alerts” tab make sure that “Show tray baloons” is enabled for both “Private Message” and “Highlighted Message”. If the notifications pile up in the bottom right corner of your screen and clicking on them does nothing, it means that XChat is using notify-send because it cannot find libnotify. I don’t know how to fix this issue on different distros, but I found a Red Hat bug explaining the problem.

Notifications coming from Empathy and XChat-GNOME

Is there any other common application that you would like to be handled by my plugin? The only prerequisite is that they somehow use standard notification bubbles (and this means I cannot implement it for Skype).

If you are looking for the source code, it’s in this git repository.

Recently, I’ve been working on making GDBus’ unit test helpers as public API on libgio (see bug #672985). Thanks to the help from David Zeuthen, it landed in gio master as GTestDBus object.

The basic idea is simple: g_test_dbus_up() starts a dbus-daemon and sets DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS env variable. That means that your tests will then be using that private session bus instead of messing with user’s. When the unit test is done, call g_test_dbus_down() which will kill the dbus-daemon. Of course in the case you unit test fails and crash, it still make sure the dbus-daemon will be cleaned.

And finally, thanks to Alexander Larsson, it even works on win32.

Enjoy

Yesterday Google released the accepted students for this year’s Google Summer of Code and BlueZ will be participating with 4 students:

Project: Bluetooth Replayer
Student: Anton Weber
Mentor: Anderson Lizardo

Project: OBEX Filesystem In Userspace
Student: Michał Poczwardowski
Mentor: Vinicius Gomes

Project: Implement AVRCP 1.3 Controller Role
Student: Rafael Fonseca
Mentor: Luiz Augusto von Dentz

Project: Visualization of Bluetooth traffic
Student: Thiago da Silva Arruda
Mentor: Gustavo Padovan

It is now community bonding time, where students get know their mentors and the community. We wish a great summer to all students.  :-)

So there are these really cool debugging macros for GLib/GObject that do things like let you iterate GLists and pretty print GObjects and GHashTables and stuff that should nowadays be available in most distros.

Unfortunately when you build your own GLib to develop against, it all breaks.

It turns out, gdb locates when to load these things by looking in $prefix/share/gdb/auto-load/ and matching the sonames, so if you have libraries with a different soname (cause they’re new versions), or in a different prefix, it just doesn’t work.

Damien Lespiau has a workaround for this that adds a command to load them from a path you can control with sys.path; which works. I looked a little for a generic solution to feed the autoloader from my GLib build prefix, but I haven’t found one yet.

Having now looked at this. I’m also excited about possibilities for combining this with GObject-Introspection to potentially do some useful things. I don’t know what the caveats are here yet, what’s safe to call and what’s not.

When working with a new git project, I like to publish my patches in git branches on my public git server. I usually use the collabora git server, but some people also have account on freedesktop, etc. But it’s a bit long just to publish a branch:

1. locally: git clone ssh://git.gnome.org/git/empathy
2. locally: ssh git.collabora.co.uk
3. collabora: cd public_html/git && git init --bare git://git.gnome.org/empathy
4. locally: git remote add xclaesse git+ssh://git.collabora.co.uk/git/user/xclaesse/empathy

Note how GNOME urls are different in 1) and 3), not only the ssh:// VS git:// but also the extra /git/ and it’s different with freedesktop.

So my first step to simplify this is to define insteadOf URLs in ~/.gitconfig both locally and on server:

locally:

[url "ssh://git.gnome.org/git/"]
    insteadof = gnome:
[url "git+ssh://git.collabora.co.uk/git/user/xclaesse/"]
    insteadof = collabora:

on server:

[url "git://git.gnome.org/"]
    insteadof = gnome:

Now the steps are:

1. locally: git clone gnome:empathy
2. locally: ssh git.collabora.co.uk
3. collabora: cd public_html/git && git init --bare gnome:empathy
4. locally: git remote add xclaesse collabora:empathy

Still I’m lazy so I don’t like sshing the server manually, so the final step is to add this git alias in your local ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]
    fork = !git config --get remote.origin.url | xargs -n 1 ssh git.collabora.co.uk \"cd ~/public_html/git && git init --bare\"

That will create a public repository for the project you’re currently in, just by typing “git fork”! Steps are now:

1. locally: git clone gnome:empathy
2. locally: git fork
3. locally: git remote add xclaesse collabora:empathy

After more than 3 years working at ProFUSION embedded systems I decided it was time to a move: Today is my first day (of many) at Collabora Ltd. :-)

I would like to take the opportunity to thank people at ProFUSION for the time I’ve working there. Those were good times.

And for the Collaborans: I hope we will rock a lot together. I’ll keep updating this blog with posts about my work at Collabora.

See you around. ;-)

A few months ago I wrote a gnome-shell extension that shows how many conversations with unread messages you have, so that I could stop missing incoming messages.
I updated the extension so it now works better and it can also show what the incoming notifications are when you press the icon. You can get the new version (and install it with just two clicks) from extensions.gnome.org. If you previously installed the extension from git and you don’t have an update button on that page it could mean you need to first manually remove ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/message-notifier@shell-extensions.barisione.org/ and reload the shell (ALT-F2 and then type “r”).

Note that the extension shows the number of conversations with new messages and not the number of messages; I don’t like seeing “2” up there if somebody just wrote me “hi” and then “how are you?”.

There is still a major problem with the extension. I wanted to be able to also see if somebody pinged me on IRC (I’m a XChat-GNOME user) so I don’t limit the count to active chat conversations, but I consider all the active notifications. I find this very useful to avoid missing something, but it means that the red icon will also appear every time banshee or rhythmbox change song. Suggestions on how to solve this?

Changing completely topic, I recently moved to a new home and, having a nice new kitchen (with dishwasher), I started cooking a lot again. I decided to start a new cooking blog called gnocchialpesto.co.uk to keep track of my recipes and share them with others. If you like food, in particular Italian one, take a look at it .

Apparently I’ve had a github account for ages, and never used it. Recently I’ve been using github a for some work I’ve been doing with Intel at Collabora.

Anyway, I thought it might be neat to move some of my random personal projects and misc that were stored on git.collabora.co.uk to github.

Xavier suggested I blog my Git aliases.

[alias]
	ci = commit -v
	prune-all = !git remote | xargs -n 1 git remote prune
	record = !git add -p && git ci
	amend-record = !git add -p && git ci --amend
	stoat = !toilet -f future STOATS
	update-master = !git checkout master && git pull -r
	lol = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit
	lola = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all

Mostly¹ self-explanatory.

git ci

Shorter than git commit, and -v shows you what you’re about to commit.

git prune-all

From the Git wiki.

git record; git amend-record

I started using these as a Darcs refugee, but they’re also a good way to avoid doing git add -p && git commit -a through overly-active muscle memory. I could probably simplify them to use git commit -p.

git lol; git lola

…come from Conrad Parker.

What’re your favourites?

1. No, I don’t remember why I added git stoat either.

Finally, the deed is done.

https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kdemultimedia

KDE Multimedia has finished migrating from subversion to git.

I’d like to thank everyone on the KDE sysadmin and multimedia teams for helping me sort things out and get it finished.

ninja edit: The sysadmins changed the link minutes after I posted so the i18n teams wouldn’t have to tweak their scripts.