The gst-browser is broken in Ubuntu 20.04

Hi everyone,

From what I've read, gst-browser could be a handy debugging tool. It
appears to be broken. No biggie. I'm just documenting my find.

Gary


$ gst-browser
Gtk-Message: 17:44:10.276: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Object: CFunctionDescriptor new: 1 "<0x7fd9836d6750>" error: Invalid C
call-out g_date_get_type

if this is regarding the .deb package in the ubuntu repos, you
should report it as a bug to ubuntu; because only the package
maintainer could fix that problem

the last i knew though, gnu-smalltalk was lacking a maintainer
in debian - presumably, it has no maintainer in ubuntu either

so you may find that the bug is already reported - if so, then
the oly thing that could be done, would be for someone to
volunteer to maintain the debian package

For what it's worth , gst-browser is working for me on Solaris 11.3.

I don't use it (I just use the CLI) but gst-browser a.k.a. VisualGST seems to work.

See screenshot in attach.  Also the about box of VisualGST (as it seems to be named),
refers to https://github.com/MrGwen/gst-visualgst but that URL is not working any more.

However I remember that the GNU smalltalk maintainer (for the last releases)
Holger Freyther mentioned something about GTK+-2.0 being stopped maintained.

This may be one of the underlying problems with a new GNU smalltalk release.

I don't know enough about GTK but in your case I'd check whether the old GTK+-2.0
canberra-gtk-module is installed on your Ubuntu system.

David Stes

----- Op 16 jan 2021 om 23:54 schreef Gary Highberger [hidden email]:

You could also try an older version of Ubuntu or
https://ubuntu-mate.org/about/ which is a fork of GNOME-2 (MATE) on Ubuntu.

I haven't used Ubuntu MATE (https://ubuntu-mate.org) but it may have the necessary GTK2 libs.

> I don't know enough about GTK but in your case I'd check whether the old
> GTK+-2.0
> canberra-gtk-module is installed on your Ubuntu system.

Basically gst-browser is not broken, but the OS Ubuntu you are using,
may be missing some installed libraries or desktop environment ...

In my opinion "gst-browser" (VisualGST) is a nice addition to GNU Smalltalk,
but it does not seem essential in the GNU smalltalk philosophy,
of a basic Smalltalk on top of Emacs/CLI etc.

Got it. Thanks!

On Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 10:47 AM [hidden email] <[hidden email]> wrote:

FWIW, gst-browser also was broken on debian8, fedora24, and
ubuntu16

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-smalltalk/2017-01/msg00002.html

i have not done such a thorough evaluation since then; but i
suspect that it has been broken on those distros ever since -
however, it is worth noting that it was working on arch/parabola
at that time; and it still is

Ubuntu has several (many) desktop choices.

Is Gary using Ubuntu with GNOME 3 ?

There are also exists Kubuntu with KDE Plasma or Ubuntu-MATE with MATE.

MATE (pronounced with emphasis on the 'e', like in Yerba Mate)
is a project that originated on Linux arch and parabola.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)

"An Argentine user of Arch Linux started the MATE project to fork and continue GNOME 2 in response to the negative reception of GNOME 3"

So in order to make the Ubuntu distribution more like the arch/parabola,

it is a possibility to install the Ubuntu-MATE flavour of Ubuntu ...

You then run a Ubuntu with GNOME 2 ("MATE") and it would be interesting to hear whether gst-browser works on Ubuntu-MATE.

David Stes