TIP_Flashing_IM_Windows_in_gnome-panel

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1 Overview
2 Procedure
3 See also

Overview

One annoying thing that I could never get to work with gnome-panel was flashing windows in conjunction with the message notification plugin in Gaim. I know a lot of other people had the same gripe as well. Well after bugging some of the gnome developers just a LITTLE bit, I got an updated patch to libwnck-2.8.0.1 posted, (see this bug thread...) and I have FINALLY got it working great.

However, this is not a final patch. It uses a set_state() call which may not necessarily be correct in certain circumstances. Please see the URL above for more information. That being said, it seems to work fine here.

I have gone through the process myself, and there is one confirmation below that the process below works. If you encounter any problems, please let me know at smitten@nextreality.net

I will attempt to reproduce the steps to get it working below for anyone else that is interested.

NOTE: This has been fixed in version 2.12.2 of libwnck. It is still masked for x86, but you can emerge it now at your own risk:

echo "=x11-libs/libwnck-2.12.2 ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
emerge -uav libwnck-2.12.2

Procedure

Creating a portage overlay directory

This is done mainly so that we are not modifying anything in the portage tree. You can put this anywhere, (typically /usr/local/portage) but in my case I chose to simply make a directory called portage in my home directory.

mkdir ~/portage

Editing your /etc/make.conf to include the portage overlay

Once you have made your portage overlay directory, we have to make sure that emerge knows about it. We do this by adding the appropriate variable in /etc/make.conf. Add the following on a new line: (make sure you're root)

PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/home/username/portage/"

Make sure portage is up to date (sync)

emerge sync

Copying contents of x11-libs/libwnck/ to your overlay directory

First we make a copy of the current contents of the x11-libs/libwnck/ to your new portage overlay directory.

mkdir ~/portage/x11-libs/
cp -a /usr/portage/x11-libs/libwnck/ ~/portage/x11-libs/

Download the patch from the gnome bugzilla database

Next we want to copy the patch down from the bugzilla gnome database.

cd ~/portage/x11-libs/libwnck/files/
wget -O libwnck-2.8.0.1-flash.patch http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=33595&action=view

You might want to open up the file 'libwnck-2.8.0.1-flash.patch' and make sure it looks like a proper patch file.

Modifiying the src_unpack() function in the libwnck-2.8.0.1.ebuild

Now since we want to apply the patch before we compile it (actually emerge will compile it for us), we have to add/override the src_unpack() function in the ebuild.

cd ~/portage/x11-libs/libwnck/
/bin/echo -e '\nsrc_unpack() {
                                                                                                                                                                
   unpack ${A}
   cd ${S}
   # Patch for pager issues, see bug #30264
   epatch ${FILESDIR}/${PN}-2.8.0.1-flash.patch
                                                                                                                                                                
}' >> libwnck-2.8.0.1.ebuild

Emerge gnome-panel-2.8.0.1

Now all that's left is to emerge the gnome-panel package. If you have already installed gnome-2.8, you only need to re-emerge libwnck-2.8.0.1, since this is the library that the patch is against. If libwnck-2.8.0.1 doesn't show up as a dependency that needs to be emerged from the command below, then you need to explicitly emerge libwnck.

emerge -av gnome-panel

--or--

emerge -av libwnck

Turn on the message notification plugin in Gaim

To do this, go to Tools -> Preferences. Select the "Plugins" category on the left hand side and check the "Message Notification" plugin. Then configure the plugin, and make sure you have "Set window manager 'URGENT' hint" selected.

env-update and restart your session

make sure libraries are updated and then we restart our session just to be safe.

as root:

env-update

and then just logout (Actions -> Logout) and relogin. I'm not sure if this is really necessary since you can probably just kill and restart the gnome-panel application.

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