Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde (Page 6 of 28)

Qt 5.11.1 and Plasma 5.13.1 in ktown ‘testing’ repository

June 24, 2018 / / 20 Comments

A couple of days ago I recompiled ‘poppler’ and the packages in ‘ktown’ that depend on it, and uploaded them into the repository as promised in my previous post.
I did that because Slackware-current updated its own poppler package and mine needs to be kept in sync to prevent breakage in other parts of your Slackware computer. I hear you wonder, what is the difference between the Slackware poppler package and this ‘ktown’ package? Simple: my ‘poppler’ package contains support for Qt5 (in addition to the QT4 support in the original package) and that is required by other packages in the ‘ktown’ repository.

But that was not all I updated this week. I have refreshed my ‘testing’ repository on ktown  with bugfix releases for Qt and Plasma. Both were introduced earlier this month in my repository with their ‘point releases’ 5.11.0 and 5.13.0 respectively, and within a week updates became available to squash reported bugs. Both releases are according to their schedules, so nothing alarming there. Business as usual. But since stability is a good thing, I decided not to adhere to my usual montly cycle of pushing updates to my repository.

Therefore I have built new packages for ‘qt5’ version 5.11.1 and for the full ‘plasma’ set (version 5.13.1) and uploaded them to my ‘testing‘ repository.

On this occasion I took the plunge myself and upgraded my laptop’s Plasma Desktop to these ‘testing’ packages. Works well!

I also took the opportunity to check how dependent the Frameworks would be on the new Qt5 release, since I have rebuilt all of the Frameworks packages in ‘testing’ against this 5.11 release of Qt5. As it turns out, there is only one Frameworks package that needs a recompilation when switching from Qt 5.9 to 5.11 and that is the ‘kdeclarative‘ package. If you use all the Frameworks package from ‘latest‘ repository instead of ‘testing’ then the Plasma Shell will not start and you will end up with a black desktop and only the application windows that were started because of session-restore will be visible. As you may know, the Plasma Shell can be restarted from the commandline in case of issues (crashes, graphical artefacts etc) with the command “plasmashell –replace” at a terminal command prompt. What happens if your kdelarative package is compiled against the wrong Qt5 is this:

eha@baxter:~$ plasmashell –replace
org.kde.kwindowsystem: Loaded plugin “/usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/kf5/org.kde.kwindowsystem.platforms/KF5WindowSystemX11Plugi
n.so” for platform “xcb”
org.kde.plasmaquick: Applet preload policy set to 1
plasmashell: relocation error: /usr/lib64/libKF5Declarative.so.5: symbol _ZN15QQmlPropertyMap15allocatePrivateEv version
Qt_5 not defined in file libQt5Qml.so.5 with link time reference

This can be fixed by replacing the ‘kdelarative’ package in Frameworks with a version that was compiled against the Qt5 your system is using.

So, in future Frameworks updates I will likely only have to recompile ‘kdeclarative’ for the ‘testing’ repository and create hard-links for all the other packages. I already am using hard-linking for all the packages that are identical in both ‘latest’ ad ‘testing’ to conserve space.

And with my laptop’s upgrade to ‘testing’, my Chromium browser stops complaining about missing browser integration support. Remember that Plasma 5.13 has a new package ‘plasma-browser-integration’ which introduces desktop controls (in your system tray for instance) to manage certain aspects of browser behavior (Chrome, Chromium, Firefox). I installed and activated the Plasma extension from the Chrome Web Store into Chromium and now I have a control widget in my system tray whenever music or a video is playing in a browser tab. Also, Plasma search (Alt-F2) is able to find individual browser tabs now.

Again I promise to generate a Plasma Live ISO, containing the latest Qt5 and Plasma5… this time I hope to be able to keep that promise. The last ISO was more than 2 months ago and is due a refresh.

May update for Plasma5

May 24, 2018 / / 61 Comments

On with the show.
After recompiling LibreOffice and VLC to compensate for the recent poppler update in Slackware-current, my next target was – naturally – my Plasma5 package set. The KDE-5_18.05 release of ‘ktown‘ for Slackware-current offers the latest KDE Frameworks (5.46.0), Plasma (5.12.5) and Applications (18.04.1) on top of Qt5 5.9.5 (I decided to wait with an update to Qt5 5.11.0).
You can and should check out the README file for more details and for installation/upgrade instructions.

News about this month’s refresh

  • In the deps section I updated my poppler package so that it again matches the version in Slackware-current (my poppler package has support for Qt5 in addition to the Qt4 support in the Slackware original). I also rebuilt cryfs after that was reported broken.
  • Frameworks, Plasma and Applications updates are focusing on improved stability and nothing exciting happened there.
  • In applications-extra I have rebuilt calligra (was affected by the new poppler) and updated the alkimia, falkon, kdevelop, kdev-php, kdev-python, krita and krusader packages. I also added one new package: krename.

I think and hope that the shape of Slackware-current is getting to a point where Patrick feels comfortable with introducing the new Plasma5 into the core. To be honest, the waiting gets tedious. The first preview of Plasma5 for Slackware was introduced in my blog almost four years ago. I’d wager that it has matured quite sufficiently in the meantime.
If you want to read more about the history of Plasma5 development for Slackware, with lots more detail, check out my older blog posts. If you think a git log is easier to read, check out my ktown git repository instead 🙂

If you are using slackpkg with the slackpkg+ extension, don’t forget to run “slackpkg install ktown” to get any new packages installed, because “slackpkg install-new” will not catch new packages in 3rd-party repositories like ‘ktown’.

I am preparing a new PLASMA5 variant of the Slackware Live ISO image, so you can check out the new desktop in the safety of a non-invasive live environment. Hopefully before the weekend… depending on the workload tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Plasma5 – April 18 edition for Slackware

April 21, 2018 / / 44 Comments

One of my previous posts discussed “ABI breakage” and how that affects software to the point where it breaks and you need to recompile stuff to un-break it. Well… last week was most likely another, bigger, surprise to many of you. The Slackware-current ChangeLog.txt update of “Thu Apr 19 01:04:06 UTC 2018” started with:

Hi folks, and welcome to the third ever Slackware Mass Rebuild (and the
longest ChangeLog entry in project history). There were two primary
motivations for rebuilding everything in the main tree. The first was to
switch to the new C++ ABI. The second was to get rid of all the .la files
in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

That was fun, seeing 1365 lines of ChangeLog and realizing how long the upgrade would take!
But in the end, this was a painless migration. WIth a simple “slackpkg update ; slackpkg upgrade slackpkg” to upgrade the slackpkg package itself. Don’t forget to check the new /etc/slackpkg/mirrors file to see if your mirror is still configured there! Followed by “slackpkg update ; slackpkg install-new ; slackpkg upgrade aaa_elflibs ; slackpkg upgrade-all” and a lot of patience. That’s about all there was to it and after a reboot the Slackware-current system would run as well as ever. A big accomplishment and hats off to Patrick Volkerding who used the past months to (mostly under the radar) update all the SlackBuild scripts and write wrappers to enable him to recompile all of Slackware from scratch, while gaining a lot on the efficiency and time management front. Kudos!

Ah well, a painless migration you heard me say…
Unless you have a ton of 3rd party software bolted onto your Slackware – like my Plasma5… because that came out pretty much broken. On the Slackware forum as well as here on the blog I already advised to hold off with upgrading for a day or so to give me the opportunity to at least recompile Plasma5.

And it so happened that the KDE developers already had all-new source code tarballs waiting for us. I compiled that on the freshly rebuilt Slackware-current and yesterday evening I uploaded my new set of Plasma5 packages to the ‘ktown‘ repository.
The KDE-5_18.04 release of ‘ktown‘ for Slackware-current offers the latest KDE Frameworks (5.45.0), Plasma (5.12.4) and Applications (18.04.0). The Qt5 was upgraded to 5.9.5. Read the README file for more details and for installation/upgrade instructions. Enjoy the latest Plasma 5 desktop environment.

So, what’s new?

  • I had to deal with a couple of packages that were broken after the massive upgrade in Slackware, so I took the opportunity to upgrade gpgme, mlt, poppler and qt5 to a newer version; and I added QScintilla to extend the package (already available in Slackware) with support for Qt5.
  • In plasma-extra the kdeconnect-framework package was updated.
  • Applications 18.04.0 is the start of a new round of improvements. Two new packages are available starting with 18.04: kamoso which is a webcam recorder, and a backup program kbackup. The instant messenger client Kopete was ported to KF5 and is contained in the source distribution, but I was unable to compile it. Perhaps more luck next month.
    Finally, the hex editor okteta moved to the ‘applications-extra’ section because its developer no longer wants to be tied to Application release windows.
  • In applications-extra I have upgraded the kdiagram and krita packages.

If you want to read more about the history of Plasma5 development for Slackware, with lots more detail, check out my older blog posts. If you think a git log is easier to read, check out my ktown git repository instead 🙂

If you are using slackpkg with the slackpkg+ extension, don’t forget to run “slackpkg install ktown” to get any new packages installed, because “slackpkg install-new” will not catch new packages in 3rd-party repositories like ‘ktown’.

I hope to get a new PLASMA5 variant of the Slackware Live ISO image out soon, containing all this new stuff! This depends on my ability to recompile LibreOffice 6.0.3 for 64bit. I ran into a bit of a snag there with gpgme-related compilation errors I have as of yet not been able to fix. Also, VLC3 needs a rebuild since that broke too… and I have not been able to find the time to address that.

Enjoy the new batch!

What all happened in March so far

March 14, 2018 / / 69 Comments

I realize I have been a wee bit silent on the blog (not counting my replies in the comments section). This was due to private issues that drained the desire for social interactions. Nevertheless there was quite a bit of activity on the Slackware packaging front.

So, what new stuff?

First of all: yesterday, Adobe released a security update for their Flash plugins for Mozilla-compatible (NPAPI) and Chromium-compatible (PPAPI) browsers. Check the version 29.0.0.113 installation status on http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/about/. You are encouraged to upgrade.

Chromium browser was updated twice… last week I made the final release in the 64 series available and today (repositories have not been updated yet) I am updating again, to the 65 release. Version 65.0.3325.146 comes with a large list of 45 security fixes, read the release notes to get the gist. Unfortunately, this new release has cost me a full week of recompiles, day & night, all the time running into new compilation errors. It was not trivial to come up with a set of patches that eradicated all the compilation errors. I wrote a couple myself, reverted a chromium commit and borrowed from Gentoo – thanks as always for these guys’ code troubleshooting skills. The discussion on the Chromium Packagers list has given me some ideas for the next iteration of the SlackBuild script that may not require this much patching. But I am pushing this version to my repository anyway, even though I just spotted a newer version on the Google blog… released yesterday. Damn.

Pale Moon browser got an update to  27.8.1. Many improvements and fixes over the 27.7.x versions, check their release notes for the details. Despite the fact that the new Mozilla Firefox is much improved as well, and a lot speedier since Mozilla switched to the Quantum codebase, people may still prefer the older codebase of Firefox from which Pale Moon was forked.

LibreOffice 6.0.2 was released last week and I built packages for Slackware 14.2 as well as -current. Still the best office suite available. I should try to build the LibreOffice online version sometime…

When Slackware 14.2 was graced with an updated set of gcc packages in the “patches” section (gcc-5.5.0 with a series of patches related to retpoline countermeasures for the recent Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities) I took the opportunity not only to give the multilib repository for Slackware 14.2 a refresher to gcc-5.5.0_multilib, but I also updated the gcc5 package for slackware-current in my regular repository to that 5.5.0 release – including the retpoline patches. Remember, my gcc5 package for slackware-current contains just the C, C++ and Java compilers and has two purposes: first it re-introduces  the GCC Java compiler which was removed in gcc-7; and second, compiling Pale Moon on slackware-current can not be done with its gcc-7 compiler… you need this gcc5 package.

E-book lovers with a fondness for organizing their collection using open source software will find a new Calibre package in my repository. Calibre 3.x for Slackware 14.2 and -current depends on libxkbcommon, podofo, qt5, qt5-webkit and unrar, and for Slackware 14.2 two additional dependencies are libinput and libwacom. All of those can be obtained from my repository as well. If you are not in need of an e-book catalogue and library program, then Calibre still has its usefulness as it includes a versatile E-book reader and a powerful EPUB editor.

Last but not least: I released a new set of Plasma5 packages. The KDE-5_18.03 release of ‘ktown‘ for Slackware-current offers the latest KDE Frameworks (5.44.0), Plasma (5.12.3) and Applications (17.12.3). Read the README file for more details and for installation/upgrade instructions. If you are adventurous, check out the ‘testing‘ variant of the ktown repository as opposed to the ‘latest‘ variant. In ‘testing’ you will find Wayland support. Note that this is experimental (hence the ‘testing’ tag of course) and not fit for day-to-day production work. The ‘latest’ repository contains a stable and productive, complete, and fun to use, Plasma 5 desktop environment.
One thing I want to mention is that I have added the new Falkon browser to the applications-extra section. Falkon is the renamed Qupzilla browser, based on Qt5, and it is destined to be added to the core Applications (not sure when precisely, probably later this year) and it will take the place of the venerable Konqueror. If you are using slackpkg with the slackpkg+ extension, don’t forget to run “slackpkg install ktown” to get the new falkon package installed, because “slackpkg install-new” will not catch new packages in 3rd-party repositories like ‘ktown’.

I promise to get a new PLASMA5 variant of the Slackware Live ISO image out soon, containing all this new stuff! Stay tuned for more.

February release of the Plasma5 Desktop for Slackware

February 10, 2018 / / 33 Comments

Yesterday, I uploaded my Febrary’18 release of Plasma 5 packages for Slackware-current. The KDE-5_18.02 release contains: KDE Frameworks 5.43.0, Plasma 5.12.0 and Applications 17.12.2. All based on Qt 5.9.4 and exclusive for Slackware–current because as explained in a previous post, I stopped providing regular Plasma 5 version updates for Slackware 14.2 (only security updates).
There’s again a choice of ‘latest‘ and ‘testing‘ where the ‘testing’ repository contains 17 recompiled packages that provide a Wayland compositor stack. This means you can have a working Plasma5 Wayland session if you use ‘testing‘ as opposed to ‘latest‘.
The ‘testing‘ repository is for… testing. Do not use those packages on a production environment unless you are familiar with Slackware, debugging graphical sessions and know your way around slackpkg/slackpkg+.

What’s new in this KDE 5_18.02 release

  • The ‘deps’ section has been graced with an updated qt5 package. I opted for qt5-5.9.4 which is the last one in the 5.9 series in the hope that Pat updates to qt5-5.10 when adding Plasma5 to Slackware.
    Also, I added two new packages here: cryptopp and cryfs. The Plasma Vault requires an encryption backend but I had not yet added one so the application was not useful. Cryfs seems to be the best choice (alternative backends would be encfs or tomb). I had ignored Vault for the past few releases but it looks like an interesting solution to store your data securely on cloud storage so I decided to make it functional.
  • Frameworks update is a stability release, see: https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.43.0.php .
  • Plasma is the highlight of the month. Version 5.12 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which replaces the previous LTS version 5.8. See https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.12.0.php .
  • Applications 17.12.2 is an incremental update for the 17.12 series and fixes some bugs.
    See https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-17.12.2.php .
  • In ‘applications-extra’ I have upgraded the packages for calligra and added calligraplan.

The accompanying README file contains full installation & upgrade instructions. I have some further reading material in case you are interested in the Wayland functionality of the ‘testing’ repository: README.testing.

Package download locations are:

If you are interested in the development of KDE 5 for Slackware, you can peek at my git repository too.

A new Plasma5 Live ISO image (based on liveslak-1.1.9.6) will be uploaded soon to http://slackware.nl/slackware-live/latest/ , in case you want to try the new Plasma5 desktop out first in a non-destructive way.

Have fun! Eric

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