libunity support gobject-introspected languages

With the latest round of Dbusmenu fixes and libunity-3.4.2 I can actually do in python:

from gi.repository import Unity
dir(Unity)

But whenever I try and use any of the classes there I get some odd errors. Eg.

>>> appman = Unity.AppInfoManager.get_instance()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/module.py", line 263, in __getattr__
    return getattr(self._introspection_module, name)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/module.py", line 160, in __getattr__
    wrapper = metaclass(name, bases, dict_)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/types.py", line 226, in __init__
    set_object_has_new_constructor(cls.__info__.get_g_type())
TypeError: must be a subtype of GObject

or

>>> dir(Unity.LauncherEntry)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/module.py", line 263, in __getattr__
    return getattr(self._introspection_module, name)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/module.py", line 136, in __getattr__
    interfaces = tuple(interface for interface in get_interfaces_for_object(info)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/module.py", line 76, in get_interfaces_for_object
    interfaces.append(getattr(module, name))
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/module.py", line 263, in __getattr__
    return getattr(self._introspection_module, name)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/module.py", line 160, in __getattr__
    wrapper = metaclass(name, bases, dict_)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gi/types.py", line 228, in __init__
    register_interface_info(cls.__info__.get_g_type())
TypeError: must be an interface

I will look into it

Bumping this up to high since it is blocking ubuntuone's integration

Mikkel, which parts of the description are actually still open? It seems that 1 is fixed, 3 is fixed upstream. 2 seems halfway fixed, do you need help with https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=638915 ?

Do you need some other help with this? I'm happy to help out with P1, but I don't want to get into mono or javascript (M1/G1/S1).

With the latest gobject-introspection 2) appears to fixed. I have only done very simple testing though, so it needs to be ratified.

That said I've seen some regressions introduced with the latest GI as well; marking methods that previously worked well as introspectable="0" in the GIR. I'm just having a quick stab at that, and I'll file it upstream when I've gathered some more intel.

Martin, If you want to work on P1 for dbusmenu I think that would be great. I'll look at the P1 for libunity myself as I work on the problem from comment #1.

I didn't find dee python overrides, neither in the Ubuntu packages nor in the upstream code. What did you mean there?
Also, where should we ship these overrides, in the gir1.2-dee.. package?

I'll start with fixing the transfer annotations in libdbusmenu, as quite a few of them are not introspectable due to that. Once that works, I'll play with the API and see what can be made more smooth with overrides.

I'll work on the annotations and overrides in lp:~pitti/dbusmenu/fix-annotations, will do a MP once it's done.

dbusmenu annotations are now fixed in the branch, the .gir looks a lot better now, and there are (almost) no unintrospectable functions any more. Still haven't tested this much from Python yet, that's still on my TODO.

@Martin the Dee overrides are in lp:dee alright http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity-team/dee/trunk/view/head:/bindings/python/Dee.py On the question of how to package the overrides I'm quite uncertain - do we have any examples we can look at here?

jdahlin helped me debug the problem from comment #1. It's because valac doesn't set the shared-library attribute on the <namespace> element in the GIR. See fx. from Gtk-3.0.gir:

  <namespace name="Gtk"
                       version="3.0"
                       shared-library="libgtk-3.so.0"
                       c:identifier-prefixes="Gtk"
                       c:symbol-prefixes="gtk">

So we can sed this in the Makefile for now, until we've cooked up a patch for valac. I'll file an upstream valac bug.

Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen [2011-02-17 12:28 -0000]:
> @Martin the Dee overrides are in lp:dee alright
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity-
> team/dee/trunk/view/head:/bindings/python/Dee.py

Ah, thanks.

> On the question of how to package the overrides I'm quite uncertain
> - do we have any examples we can look at here?

No, I think this would be the first package which ships any. The
overrides of Glib, Gio, Gtk, etc. already come with pygobject, but
they don't fit well there either. I think shipping the overrides in
the gir* package will work fine.

Martin

--
Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org)

Mikkel,

I just saw your test code in the upstream vala bug. I just wondered whether you are aware that you can use local typelibs by setting $GI_TYPELIB_PATH ? I use

  export GI_TYPELIB_PATH=$HOME/upstream/gtk/gtk:$HOME/upstream/gtk/gdk:$HOME/upstream/pango/pango

This works similar to LD_LIBRARY_PATH for *.so files. By using both you can avoid the "sudo cp" commands to the system dirs.

The issue from comment #1 is fixed in libunity trunk, so if I "make install" libunity I can use libunity from python intended. Eagerly awaiting for this to be packaged :-)

make that "from python as intended"

This bug was fixed in the package dee - 0.5.10-0ubuntu1

---------------
dee (0.5.10-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - Sync problems when restarting Unity place daemons (LP: #721289)
    - libunity support gobject-introspected languages (LP: #709240)
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:07:48 +0100

This bug was fixed in the package libunity - 3.4.6-0ubuntu1

---------------
libunity (3.4.6-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - libunity support gobject-introspected languages (LP: #709240)
    - inspector's unity_running is not initialized (LP: #719769)
  * debian/rules:
    - now, try to get a more stable ABI, use a symbols file
    - whip the pyc pyo generated
    - debian/libunity3.symbols
  * ship the gir python override in the gir package, still nice some tweaking
    though
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:10:48 +0100

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.