00menu.jl causes error at startup

Do you have /etc/X11/sawfish/debian-menu.jl ?

If not, it probably means you don't have the menu package installed. sawfish does not depend on it because it's not *required*, just extremely useful.

I do not. But I wonder if that is the reason since I don't have that file on my work computer either and it doesn't complain there (and yes, that one too is running Gutsy ;).

Actually, I fail to find a file called debian-menu.jl(c) in the menu package, and anywhere else in the whole ubuntu (including universe and multiverse) for that matter.

This confuses me, but I can say for a fact that moving away 00menu.jl makes the problem disappear.

Sorry about the long time to answer. I blame launchpad, that did not send me any warning you'd answered :)

The debian-menu.jl file is not part of any package, it's generated on install of sawfish if the menu package is available.

And I checked incorrectly, the file you should have is /var/lib/sawfish/debian-menu.jl Please check if that is present in the computer that does not have the error.

No problem, I cope just fine with my workaround which is to simply delete /etc/X11/sawfish/00menu.jl. ;)

Indeed that file is present on the computer where I don't have the problem. On the home computer where I have it, the directory /var/lib/sawfish exists but is empty. It is still empty after a reinstall of the sawfish package.

It might be useful to know that this installation has been continuously updated with every Ubuntu release since Dapper.

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 or 9.04?

I have the menu package installed now, so I no longer experience the symptom. However, from examination of the sawfish.postinst script, I suspect it can still occur if sawfish is installed and menu is not:

Afaics, sawfish unconditionally installs /etc/X11/sawfish/site-init.d/00menu.jl, which unconditionally requires debian-menu. However, sawfish.postinst only creates it if update-menus is present at the time:

# Automatically added by dh_installmenu
inst=/etc/menu-methods/sawfish
if [ -f $inst ]; then
        chmod a+x $inst
        if [ -x "`which update-menus 2>/dev/null`" ]; then
                update-menus
        fi
fi
# End automatically added section

So it looks like the bug still is present.

Confirmed in Ubuntu 9.10.

If the menu package is not installed sawfish starts but the middle mouse menu is not available and is not possible to launch any application.

A possible solution could be something like this:

inst=/etc/menu-methods/sawfish
if [ -f $inst ]; then
        chmod a+x $inst
        if [ -x "`which update-menus 2>/dev/null`" ]; then
                update-menus
        else
                generate-default-sawfish-debian-menu
        fi
fi

So either the Sawfish package has to depend on menu, or update to 1.6.{0,1}, which shipps it's own fdo-menu implementation (and therefore `outperforms' the menu stuff).