Bloodbat's non-Sanguine Module Rack related development news, rants and blogs

Development
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I needed a space to mention updates and the like for tools and other stuff I develop for Rack besides the modules, so… this it.

I’ll get it rolling with this:

The Rack Free installer script has been updated to version 4.0!

  • It is now interactive (or command line driven, if desired) so every distro I’ve tested it with and added can be selected by the user instead of downloading separate scripts.

  • More distributions are known and have been tested; this is the complete list:

    • Manjaro Linux, Arch Linux, EndeavourOS, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, Pop!_OS and Fedora Linux.

  • It can update or downgrade existing installations done by the script (or those present in the default “Rack2Free” folder in the user’s home directory) by passing it the -u parameter followed by the desired version.

    E.g:

    install_rack_free.sh -u 2.6.5

    Will update the installed Rack Free to the latest RC.

Find the script here:

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Cool. The topic title is a tad generic, maybe rename it to something like “Bloodbat’s Rack related development stuff”.

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You are absolutely right… title changed to something more specific :slight_smile:

Thanks for the suggestion!

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News about the build toolchain, the Sanguine PJ Editor and whatever else I make non-module, yet Rack related will also be posted in this thread.

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Nice, looking forward to see what you have got going on.

Particularly interested in the toolchain and using GitHub actions to automatically build releases, just seen this today:

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I hope you find something useful :slight_smile:

As for the release immutability… I can see why that could be useful; but I think more granular controls are desirable, from what I gather… I have to make a test repo to build simple nightlies and see what happens when I turn the new option on (from what I read in the link, what I expect will happen: no more self-updating nightlies or access to that preview release from a single link unless I make a new tag and a new release… every time a nightly is supposed to update, which is… appropriately, every night (neat UTC+0) or whenever I trigger one manually).

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Tales from the broken cursor

I said this thread would include rants, so… here is one… I hope it can help someone if they face this seemingly silly problem.

Virtual machines are quite a useful little tool when installing and using multiple operating systems quickly and without affecting what is already setup and, also, for avoiding the pesky, slow and still a little dangerous, partition resizing; so some of the distributions mentioned in the post above about the 4.0 installer script were installed, played with, tested and tweaked using virtual machines.

VirtualBox in this case… as much as I’ve used and loved VMWare for quite a while, their latest releases have been growing more and more awful and useless for my needs with each passing version; while VirtualBox, honestly quite nasty at times, has been growing better (until you want to mount an obscene amount of SCSI drives in a Windows 2000 VM… subst is your friend).

While testing some of the distributions mentioned in the post above about the 4.0 installer script update I came across an irritating problem: the mouse cursor never changed to my selected ones, staying as the image used by the host, if “Mouse integration” was enabled (making it a pain to resize windows), or downright disappeared, if “Mouse integration” was disabled (making the thing impossible to use with a GUI… for testing a GUI program :S )

I have a happy, non-transient machine with proper cursors… what was happening?

The first impulse was to blame the virtualization software, after all, even if both distributions are Arch based, they are different enough in some respects… so I switched the machine to VMWare… ooh… the same problem! Unlikely to be the virtualization, then…

Maybe it was the X server? (I want nothing to do with nor care for Wayland) So I made the X server congruent between my machine with a cursor and the one without… No dice either :frowning:

So, not the server, then…

uname -a

Oh… there’s an interesting difference! The machine with the working cursor is using a 6.12 kernel, while the broken one was using a 6.17 one!

So… time to switch kernels! (Cue the old 60’s Batman stinger and spinning transition here).

And lo’ the cursor was back! So… a kernel issue then.

If you are using Arch Linux or EndeavourOS with a recent install or update under a VM you’ll probably run into this issue too… the fastest and easiest way I found to fix it was to install the linux-lts kernel and switch the machine to use it (not really straightforward; but easy under Arch based distributions…): it is a 6.12 kernel.

Most Debian based distributions lag behind quite a bit; so they are unlikely to run into this… for the time being (I’m honestly not sure if Debian itself did suffer from this… I didn’t have a happy time with it, so I put it out of mind) and the Fedora portion of the script was there since the first version (it was, after all, inspired by a Fedora user looking for help), so I didn’t reinstall it.

I found another proposed solution here, after a while:

but it didn’t work for me and, also, that solution carries its own set of quirks…

Another solution was to change VirtualBox’s display adapter to VBoxSVGA for the guest; but the damned thing is stubborn and refuses to acknowledge my changes… I did say it could be nasty (and that little thing can annoy me to no end when I need changes to happen… perhaps I’ll rant another day about how to do it… sometimes…). I find it to be a really sad paradox that the more “user friendly” some software tries to be, the more obscure and infuriating it can get, seems to happen a lot these days.

Maybe this will help someone, somewhere, sometime.

EOR

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I love a good rant! Have you looked at Proxmox instead for virtualisation? Someone recommended it to me a few weeks ago, haven’t tried it yet.

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I know it exists; but that’s about it; I’ll take a closer look at it :slight_smile:

Perhaps it will inspire another rant :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks :slight_smile:

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Good Qarma

The one and only requirement listed for Rack in the installation section of its manual, where Linux is concerned, is “Zenity”.

What is that and why do I want it, you may be wondering.

It is a GTK based dialog engine for the Gnome desktop… as for wanting it… well, Rack requires it :stuck_out_tongue: (and you better believe it does… endless loops, with black screens, when starting it? Weird crashes, perhaps, if you somehow managed to get beyond the starting point? The insanity is caused by a lack of Zenity).

That means two things:

  • Some form of GTK needs to be installed in the system.

  • Users are stuck with the awful, awful, Gnome dialogs that, in my experience, don’t like playing well with other desktops where theming is concerned, unless they happen to also be based around GTK one way or the other (Gnome, obviously, Cinammon, Mate and XFCE I know, in fact, are), and even when GTK is the beating heart of the desktop of choice, certain dialogs can remain their cellphone-like horrible selves… but “colorized”… if the user is lucky.

So… what happens when a user wants a GTK free system (sadly, easier said than done)?

Well, you got Qarma! A Zenity compatible version of the dialogs thing; but based on Qt… so it integrates better with the overall experience when KDE is the desktop of choice (or when you find the Gnome dialogs annoying… I know I do).

I’ve had good experiences with it and it works as a drop-in replacement for Zenity; some distributions carry it in their repositories; for others it has to be built (for example, Arch and its ilk list it in the AUR), and while developing the installer script I noticed at least one KDE distribution was smart enough to install it when I called for Zenity in my tests, sadly I forgot which one.

Just a little sidebar: I mention some desktops with GTK roots above… so Zenity should be there already… right? Wrong… a number of distributions I tested, with GTK based desktops… lack Zenity by default. I guess I am not the only one who finds those dialogs unbearable.

This is more of a PSA than a notice that I will try and detect the desktop in the installer script: Rack calls for Zenity, so… Zenity it gets… also, I didn’t find, in my tests, a single distribution without an available Zenity… Qarma… that’s a different story.

Delving a little deeper and, perhaps, getting some good Qarma for their KDE or their sanity is an exercise left to the reader.

What happens with other desktops based around their own libraries? Well… I don’t play around with those a lot; so I’m not sure something like Qarma exists for them… so… Zenity it is? (Maybe Qarma, if you don’t mind the Qt libraries it requires… ahh those libraries… they are invading every system with multiple copies these days).

Now for something not at all technical… I’ve been watching the Welcome to Derry series… the horror elements can be more adult and gore oriented or youngling friendly (a ghost chase sequence was fun; but, honestly… kinda cheesy) depending on who directed the episode; but the overall story, so far, is interesting… if you like horrors, you could do worse.

Lookit! Another rant.

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