Metacity Goals #2

So, the first round of Metacity
Goals seemed to be pretty successful. Dan Sanders fixed bug 335076 (Maximizing and unmaximizing windows doesn’t raise them) and bug
334899 (close-window verification dialog not shown when main window is minimized), while Thomas Andersen fixed bug 335524 (need to warn when apps set WM_TRANSIENT_FOR to an invalid window). Two other people found good starting bugs on their own; Brain Pepple added support for
po/LINGUAS from Gnome Goal #2
and Andy Morum fixed bug 336605 (needs to build with –disable-xsync). And I should mention that while new developers fix these tasks, Björn and Thomas keep plugging away fixing issues all over the map. And Soeren has been very prolific in providing a near constant stream of improvements while hacking on the compositor, but has kind of gotten the shaft limelight-wise, being co-maintainer and all.

So, here’s a new round of Metacity Goals. These are simple coding
tasks for those wanting to get started in Gnome. As before, the first step is to build a CVS version of Metacity — this is much easier than you might expect because you do not need to build all of Gnome (or even any other modules) and you don’t have to actually install it. Just follow the few steps in the “Minimal Building/Testing Environment” section of Metacity’s HACKING
file to do this. The second step is to pick a bug, and I have a few
suggestions….

First, the bugs that are still left from last time:

• Bug
  335351 — Support sibling from restacking ConfigureRequests

  This is just an unimplemented FIXME, basically. In the bug, I
  point out a section of code having stuff very similar to what’s
  needed to implement this.

• Bug
  338361 — Focus with maximize/unmaximize keyboard commands
  and sloppy/mouse focus

  Has good steps to duplicate, and I provided directions showing
  where a similar bug has been fixed elsewhere to help you fix
  this one.

Plus a round of new bugs:

• Bug
  126497 — Can’t revert or undo either drags or resizes with
  the escape key

  There’s a couple steps to fixing this, but I outline them in
  the bug with pointers and all of them are pretty short.

• Bug
  323820 — Moving maximized windows from one xinerama to
  another broken

  Should just be a few lines of code, and I even point out where
  to look. Hurry, get it before someone else!

• Bug
  322840 — Missing synthetic configure notify makes windows
  walk up the screen

  This one probably doesn’t fit in this list, but I can’t resist
  throwing it in. It will probably be harder than the others,
  because I’m first asking that someone write a testcase
  displaying the bug (for both testing and patch verification
  purposes).

  If you can get that testcase written though, the patch to fix
  the bug in metacity is almost certainly a one liner (just
  making sure send_configure_notify() gets called when it needs
  to be). I’m even fairly sure which function needs to be
  modified (though it’s not exactly a simple function), so the
  big thing really is just getting a nice simple testcase.

• Bug
  333328 — constraints borkage with titlebar

  People can lose the titlebars of their windows, having them go
  off the screen. (oops! One more bug from the rewrite of
  constraints.c for Gnome 2.14…) Fixing this means writing a
  new constraint in constraints.c; I’ve outline all the necessary
  steps in the bug.

Those interested in getting started in Gnome working on some other
module, may want to have a look at the Gnome Goals, bugs in
bugzilla marked as being suitable
projects for new developers, and other general information on the
stupidly-named GnomeLove
page containing information to help you get started.