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Xfce infrastructure in 2020

  • July 18, 2020
  • Skunnyk

Oh boy, 3 years without any blogpost ! So much things happened in the Xfce world!
First, we finally released Xfce 4.14 in August 2019, more than 4 years of effort, a migration to gtk3, and so much new things, but you already know that, and you surely already run it. We are now working on Xfce 4.16 , with the hope to release it this year (yes, in 2020) !
You can read more development news on our blog.
Some buzzwords: new icons, CSD, drop of gtk2 support, UI revamp, and tons of other stuff.

xfce4-setting-manager 4.15

I want to talk a bit about the infrastructure.
Last year, we had a Gandi sponsorship for our servers. I started an Ansible repository with all our services (no more -undocumented- local modifications!), and we migrated a big part of our infra to the new servers (docs, www, wiki etc).

Then came the time to think about our development environment. We used the cgit/gitolite/bugzilla triptych, which worked fine for us for more than a decade, but make difficulty to have new contributor (our workflow was…hm, suboptimal).
We tested differents solutions (mainly Gitea and GitLab), and we opted for the famous Gitlab, already used by multiples open source projects. In the core team we were several to use it at work, so we were in a familiar environment.

For months, a gitlab was running on one of our Gandi instance, to do tests and prepare the transition.

But it was so much work that we never started the real migration. Then came the Covid-19 lockdown. No friends, no bars, lot of free time, so why not spent it on Xfce ?

With Simon (ochosi) and Andre (andreldm), we started to use our own gitlab by opening issues, creating todo, doing merge requests etc related to the migration.
The 1st of May, we finally did the migration to GitLab ! Woot !

Jason (j4yav), working for Gitlab inc, joined us and proposed to help us for the Gitlab CI/CD setup. At the same time, we got a new (sponsored !) VM from FossHost ! Perfect timing, we can now run a dedicated gitlab-runner instance, and we started to use gitlab-ci !

As of July 2020, almost all Xfce components (core, apps, panel plugins) run make distcheck on every merge requests and push to master, thanks to our xfce-build docker container.

xfce gitlab-ci pipelines

Now that we have a beautiful GitLab, merge requests and CI, the only missing part was… the migration from Bugzilla !
I forked and modified bztogl, a tool developped and used by Gnome and Freedesktop folks when they migrated away from bugzilla to gitlab in 2018/2019.
Initially, we wanted to migrate all bugzilla issues to gitlab (opened and closed ones). But we had more than 15000 issues ! We decided to only migrate opened issues. We took the opportunity to do a biiig cleanup of old bugs by closing more than 500 of them.

A important condition of the bugzilla migration was to not lose our 15 years of history.
AndreLDM did a huge work by creating bzstatic, a tool to snapshot a bugzilla instance and make it a simple static html version : https://bugzilla.xfce.org.
He open sourced it at https://gitlab.xfce.org/andreldm/bzstatic !

xfce bugzillla bzstatic

As a result, we now have a modern developments workflow, fully integrated with gitlab. We enabled github and gitlab.com auth on our instance (some people requested it), and since 3 months, we’ve seen a surge of new contributors, issues and merge request ! Really a good news for the Xfce project ! We also had a sponsorship from Scaleway lately, that we need to set up !

So much things left to do, like update all our documentations for the new workflow, work on Xfce 4.16, get rid of our old release manager and use gitlab-ci to generate artifacts, simplify our translation workflow and tons of other things !

Enjoy !

Road to Xfce 4.14, part 2

  • May 30, 2017
  • Skunnyk

More than 1 year since my latest blogpost… wow !
Lots of activities these last months, on code and infra side :)
But the good news is that we had done a lots of background tasks (see the Infrastructure section) !

As you might know, Xfce 4.14 is a transitionnal release, where the main goal is to port all components to GTK+3.

GTK+3 minimum version has been bumped to version 3.20 (and maybe 3.22), because of so much changes since gtk 3.14 (broken themes, css), this will remove a lot of ifdef maze and code complexity to support several gtk versions. By the time of 4.14 release, all major distributions will have gtk>3.20.

You can check the status of all currents efforts on the wiki. Please check this page before starting a GTK+3 port, maybe it’s already done but not yet on master !

Core

Almost all core components have now a gtk+3 version (yai !), with developement releases lately ! Here a small summary :

In the help wanted section, AndreLDM is currently working on Thunar gtk+3 port ! If you have gtk/gdk/cairo knowledges, any contributor is welcome ! Contact us on #xfce-dev irc channel (freenode) or xfce4-dev mailist.

Ochosi made some great blog posts on all activities theses last months, (xfce4-notifyd, panel, taskmanager, clipman), stay tuned on https://blog.xfce.org/ !

Xfce Apps

In the xfce apps world, please notice the work on xfce4-terminal , with a complete port to gtk+3 in 0.8 (+ get rid of the old and insecure vte 0.28), new features and more : https://git.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-terminal/tree/NEWS .

This work will be available in the future Debian Stretch! Thanks to Igor for his hard work !

You can also notice the GTK+3 port of xfce4-screenshooter by AndreLDM.

Xfce Panel plugins

On the panel plugins side, tons of new releases, I can’t list all of them - netload, clipman, datetime, cpufreq etc - with of course a bunch of gtk3 ports, thanks to all of our contributors.

Look at the https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce-announce/ mailist to see the work done.

I also updated the xfce4-sample-plugin which can be used as a base if you want to start a new panel plugin !

Tests

If you want to test the current state of Xfce 4.14, you can look at xfce-test, a docker image by Florian which allow you to test git master and to run behave (behaviour-driven development) ! -okay sometimes it’s b0rken-

Ochosi wrote a small blog post about this docker image last month.

Here a screenshot of a git master build (a.k.a : xfce 4.14) :

xfce-test

Infrastructure

Almost all the infrastructure problems we had by the time of my last blog post have been fixed.

Thanks to gaston, user repositories are now working, and all services are now HTTPS enabled (with let’s encrypt) ! Youhou !

Moreover, since a few month, I try to take care of the Xfce servers infrastructure. Here a small summary of latest actions.

Git / Bugzilla

  • Enabling syntax highlighting on cgit web interface ! Based on python fragment, it detect c/h files, see https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/panel-plugins/power-manager-plugin/power-manager-button.c as an example.
  • Bug number catch in commit message to highlight them in cgit and link to the related bugzilla issue ! It catch several patterns like Bug #xxxx or bug xxxx. Developers, please use it ! :) bz issue catch
  • Speaking of bug number, a new git hook is in place, it parse the git commit message, detect if there is a bug number referenced, and automatically posts commits references to bugzilla ! An example: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12159#c4 ! This is a really cool new feature (thanks ochosi for the idea). It’s not perfect and it need more works, but it is now available on all repositories ! bz gitbot
  • A new bugzilla template/theme by knome is available, with a lot of improvements ! You can enable it in your account preferences. It’s still a work in progress but should be released as the default theme soon bugzilla theme
  • Upgrade to latest cgit version (1.1)

Website

Maybe you already seen it, but the https://xfce.org website got a nice revamp with a more modern code/css, and is now responsive. Many thanks to knome, you can read his blog post which contain more informations :)

Misc

  • http://geoip.xfce.org (used by the weather plugin to auto-detect the user localization) has been updated and should be more accurate. It is also available in https.
  • The wiki engine (dokuwiki) and plugins used on wiki.x.o, docs.x.o and goodies.x.o, has been updated to latest release.
  • The forum engine has been updated.
  • Some obsoletes/outdated subdomains now redirect to the main xfce.org website (xfc.x.o, squeeze.x.o, thunar.x.o, foundation.x.o etc)
  • The wiki now use an invisible captcha and not an ugly one like previously.
  • Tons of Infrastructure bugs opened on our bugzilla has been fixed.

Enjoy,

Road to Xfce 4.14, part 2

  • May 30, 2017
  • Skunnyk

More than 1 year since my latest blogpost… wow !
Lots of activities these last months, on code and infra side :)
But the good news is that we had done a lots of background tasks (see the Infrastructure section) !

As you might know, Xfce 4.14 is a transitionnal release, where the main goal is to port all components to GTK+3.

GTK+3 minimum version has been bumped to version 3.20 (and maybe 3.22), because of so much changes since gtk 3.14 (broken themes, css), this will remove a lot of ifdef maze and code complexity to support several gtk versions. By the time of 4.14 release, all major distributions will have gtk>3.20.

You can check the status of all currents efforts on the wiki. Please check this page before starting a GTK+3 port, maybe it’s already done but not yet on master !

Core

Almost all core components have now a gtk+3 version (yai !), with developement releases lately ! Here a small summary :

In the help wanted section, AndreLDM is currently working on Thunar gtk+3 port ! If you have gtk/gdk/cairo knowledges, any contributor is welcome ! Contact us on #xfce-dev irc channel (freenode) or xfce4-dev mailist.

Ochosi made some great blog posts on all activities theses last months, (xfce4-notifyd, panel, taskmanager, clipman), stay tuned on https://blog.xfce.org/ !

Xfce Apps

In the xfce apps world, please notice the work on xfce4-terminal , with a complete port to gtk+3 in 0.8 (+ get rid of the old and insecure vte 0.28), new features and more : https://git.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-terminal/tree/NEWS .

This work will be available in the future Debian Stretch! Thanks to Igor for his hard work !

You can also notice the GTK+3 port of xfce4-screenshooter by AndreLDM.

Xfce Panel plugins

On the panel plugins side, tons of new releases, I can’t list all of them - netload, clipman, datetime, cpufreq etc - with of course a bunch of gtk3 ports, thanks to all of our contributors.

Look at the https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce-announce/ mailist to see the work done.

I also updated the xfce4-sample-plugin which can be used as a base if you want to start a new panel plugin !

Tests

If you want to test the current state of Xfce 4.14, you can look at xfce-test, a docker image by Florian which allow you to test git master and to run behave (behaviour-driven development) ! -okay sometimes it’s b0rken-

Ochosi wrote a small blog post about this docker image last month.

Here a screenshot of a git master build (a.k.a : xfce 4.14) :

xfce-test

Infrastructure

Almost all the infrastructure problems we had by the time of my last blog post have been fixed.

Thanks to gaston, user repositories are now working, and all services are now HTTPS enabled (with let’s encrypt) ! Youhou !

Moreover, since a few month, I try to take care of the Xfce servers infrastructure. Here a small summary of latest actions.

Git / Bugzilla

  • Enabling syntax highlighting on cgit web interface ! Based on python fragment, it detect c/h files, see https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/panel-plugins/power-manager-plugin/power-manager-button.c as an example.
  • Bug number catch in commit message to highlight them in cgit and link to the related bugzilla issue ! It catch several patterns like Bug #xxxx or bug xxxx. Developers, please use it ! :) bz issue catch
  • Speaking of bug number, a new git hook is in place, it parse the git commit message, detect if there is a bug number referenced, and automatically posts commits references to bugzilla ! An example: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12159#c4 ! This is a really cool new feature (thanks ochosi for the idea). It’s not perfect and it need more works, but it is now available on all repositories ! bz gitbot
  • The famous “Bug 12117 - The default desktop startup screen causes damage to monitor!” got a lot of attention (x10 in traffic!) last March on reddit, hackernews, fefes.de and killed our poor bugzilla instance ! (thanks mod_perl :] ). Here are some visitor stats, see the difference…
  • A new bugzilla template/theme by knome is available, with a lot of improvements ! You can enable it in your account preferences. It’s still a work in progress but should be released as the default theme soon bugzilla theme
  • Upgrade to latest cgit version (1.1)

Website

Maybe you already seen it, but the https://xfce.org website got a nice revamp with a more modern code/css, and is now responsive. Many thanks to knome, you can read his blog post which contain more informations :)

Misc

  • http://geoip.xfce.org (used by the weather plugin to auto-detect the user localization) has been updated and should be more accurate. It is also available in https.
  • The wiki engine (dokuwiki) and plugins used on wiki.x.o, docs.x.o and goodies.x.o, has been updated to latest release.
  • The forum engine has been updated.
  • Some obsoletes/outdated subdomains now redirect to the main xfce.org website (xfc.x.o, squeeze.x.o, thunar.x.o, foundation.x.o etc)
  • The wiki now use an invisible captcha and not an ugly one like previously.
  • Tons of Infrastructure bugs opened on our bugzilla has been fixed.

Enjoy,

Road to Xfce 4.14, part 2

  • May 30, 2017
  • Skunnyk

More than 1 year since my latest blogpost… wow !
Lots of activities these last months, on code and infra side :)
But the good news is that we had done a lots of background tasks (see the Infrastructure section) !

As you might know, Xfce 4.14 is a transitionnal release, where the main goal is to port all components to GTK+3.

GTK+3 minimum version has been bumped to version 3.20 (and maybe 3.22), because of so much changes since gtk 3.14 (broken themes, css), this will remove a lot of ifdef maze and code complexity to support several gtk versions. By the time of 4.14 release, all major distributions will have gtk>3.20.

You can check the status of all currents efforts on the wiki. Please check this page before starting a GTK+3 port, maybe it’s already done but not yet on master !

Core

Almost all core components have now a gtk+3 version (yai !), with developement releases lately ! Here a small summary :

In the help wanted section, AndreLDM is currently working on Thunar gtk+3 port ! If you have gtk/gdk/cairo knowledges, any contributor is welcome ! Contact us on #xfce-dev irc channel (freenode) or xfce4-dev mailist.

Ochosi made some great blog posts on all activities theses last months, (xfce4-notifyd, panel, taskmanager, clipman), stay tuned on https://blog.xfce.org/ !

Xfce Apps

In the xfce apps world, please notice the work on xfce4-terminal , with a complete port to gtk+3 in 0.8 (+ get rid of the old and insecure vte 0.28), new features and more : https://git.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-terminal/tree/NEWS .

This work will be available in the future Debian Stretch! Thanks to Igor for his hard work !

You can also notice the GTK+3 port of xfce4-screenshooter by AndreLDM.

Xfce Panel plugins

On the panel plugins side, tons of new releases, I can’t list all of them - netload, clipman, datetime, cpufreq etc - with of course a bunch of gtk3 ports, thanks to all of our contributors.

Look at the https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce-announce/ mailist to see the work done.

I also updated the xfce4-sample-plugin which can be used as a base if you want to start a new panel plugin !

Tests

If you want to test the current state of Xfce 4.14, you can look at xfce-test, a docker image by Florian which allow you to test git master and to run behave (behaviour-driven development) ! -okay sometimes it’s b0rken-

Ochosi wrote a small blog post about this docker image last month.

Here a screenshot of a git master build (a.k.a : xfce 4.14) :

xfce-test

Infrastructure

Almost all the infrastructure problems we had by the time of my last blog post have been fixed.

Thanks to gaston, user repositories are now working, and all services are now HTTPS enabled (with let’s encrypt) ! Youhou !

Moreover, since a few month, I try to take care of the Xfce servers infrastructure. Here a small summary of latest actions.

Git / Bugzilla

  • Enabling syntax highlighting on cgit web interface ! Based on python fragment, it detect c/h files, see https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/panel-plugins/power-manager-plugin/power-manager-button.c as an example.
  • Bug number catch in commit message to highlight them in cgit and link to the related bugzilla issue ! It catch several patterns like Bug #xxxx or bug xxxx. Developers, please use it ! :) bz issue catch
  • Speaking of bug number, a new git hook is in place, it parse the git commit message, detect if there is a bug number referenced, and automatically posts commits references to bugzilla ! An example: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12159#c4 ! This is a really cool new feature (thanks ochosi for the idea). It’s not perfect and it need more works, but it is now available on all repositories ! bz gitbot
  • The famous “Bug 12117 - The default desktop startup screen causes damage to monitor!” got a lot of attention (x10 in traffic!) last March on reddit, hackernews, fefes.de and killed our poor bugzilla instance ! (thanks mod_perl :] ). Here are some visitor stats, see the difference…
  • A new bugzilla template/theme by knome is available, with a lot of improvements ! You can enable it in your account preferences. It’s still a work in progress but should be released as the default theme soon bugzilla theme
  • Upgrade to latest cgit version (1.1)

Website

Maybe you already seen it, but the https://xfce.org website got a nice revamp with a more modern code/css, and is now responsive. Many thanks to knome, you can read his blog post which contain more informations :)

Misc

  • http://geoip.xfce.org (used by the weather plugin to auto-detect the user localization) has been updated and should be more accurate. It is also available in https.
  • The wiki engine (dokuwiki) and plugins used on wiki.x.o, docs.x.o and goodies.x.o, has been updated to latest release.
  • The forum engine has been updated.
  • Some obsoletes/outdated subdomains now redirect to the main xfce.org website (xfc.x.o, squeeze.x.o, thunar.x.o, foundation.x.o etc)
  • The wiki now use an invisible captcha and not an ugly one like previously.
  • Tons of Infrastructure bugs opened on our bugzilla has been fixed.

Enjoy,

Road to Xfce 4.14

  • April 12, 2016
  • Skunnyk

The looong road to xfce 4.14. I hope you still want some news about Xfce !
As usual, the xfce development is slow, has some organisation problems (only few members have access to servers, and are often not present), and lack “core” maintainers/mentors. But hey, we do our best :).

The bigger change for 4.14 is the port / upgrade to GTK+ 3.x.
It will be a like-for-like port. New and “big” features are postponed to 4.16.

You can read the thread on the ML https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-February/031146.html about the decision of only port to gtk3 and not introduce any new features for now.

The roadmap is available on the Wiki : http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.14/roadmap. The minimum requiered version has been fixed to be GTK+ 3.14.

Roadmap / Planned Features :

  • All components of -core will be ported to Gtk+ 3.
  • Replace dbus-glib with GDbus.
  • Review icon-names in all components and use consistent naming, following the fd.o spec where possible
  • Use symbolic icons for panel plugins and in apps where suitable
  • Replace deprecated widgets.

Here is a quick (and somewhat incomplete) overview of what is already done !

Core components

Work is on progress for core components, with “users” branches availables on http://git.xfce.org/ (xfce4-panel, libxfce4ui, xfce4-session, panel etc). Nothing really available for daily use though.

Lots of works on xfwm4’ compositor (in master), with implementation of vsync using OpenGL, libepoxy support, adding of DRI3/Present to the compositor, use of GLX for compositing instead of Xrender…

Libxfce4ui 4.12 already compile with gtk2 and gtk3 support, exo git master have a gtk3 preliminary support, garcon is already ported. xfdesktop have a gtk3 branch

The panel support GTK-3 plugins since 4.12, but it core need to be upgraded to use gtk3.

Xfce4-power-manager

One of the most active project. Version 1.6 (released last month) is a complete port to gtk3 and gdbus, see http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/NEWS

Xfce4-notifyd

A GTK3 branch exist, you can read the thread on the ML : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-October/031504.html. I use it since few months, and it works pretty well :)

Xfce4-Appfinder

xfce4-appfinder progress to gtk3 : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-August/031438.html
Can you guess which one use GTK3 ? (hint: the left one ;)) xfce4-appfinder gtk3

Plugins

Some plugins are still active, and are already ported to GTK-3 (xfce4-indicator-plugin, xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin), as xfce4-panel support both gtk2 and gtk3 plugins.

Last months have seen new versions of xfce4-equake-plugin, xfce4-embed-plugin, xfce4-verve-plugin, xfce4-notes-plugin, xfce4-cpufreq-plugin.

One of the more usefull new plugin is the pulseaudio-plugin, a replacement for xfce4-mixer : http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin/, I use it and it works well.

xfce4-notifyd gtk3

Stay tuned !

Road to Xfce 4.14

  • April 12, 2016
  • Skunnyk

The looong road to xfce 4.14. I hope you still want some news about Xfce !
As usual, the xfce development is slow, has some organisation problems (only few members have access to servers, and are often not present), and lack “core” maintainers/mentors. But hey, we do our best :).

The bigger change for 4.14 is the port / upgrade to GTK+ 3.x.
It will be a like-for-like port. New and “big” features are postponed to 4.16.

You can read the thread on the ML https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-February/031146.html about the decision of only port to gtk3 and not introduce any new features for now.

The roadmap is available on the Wiki : http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.14/roadmap. The minimum requiered version has been fixed to be GTK+ 3.14.

Roadmap / Planned Features :

  • All components of -core will be ported to Gtk+ 3.
  • Replace dbus-glib with GDbus.
  • Review icon-names in all components and use consistent naming, following the fd.o spec where possible
  • Use symbolic icons for panel plugins and in apps where suitable
  • Replace deprecated widgets.

Here is a quick (and somewhat incomplete) overview of what is already done !

Core components

Work is on progress for core components, with “users” branches availables on http://git.xfce.org/ (xfce4-panel, libxfce4ui, xfce4-session, panel etc). Nothing really available for daily use though.

Lots of works on xfwm4’ compositor (in master), with implementation of vsync using OpenGL, libepoxy support, adding of DRI3/Present to the compositor, use of GLX for compositing instead of Xrender…

Libxfce4ui 4.12 already compile with gtk2 and gtk3 support, exo git master have a gtk3 preliminary support, garcon is already ported. xfdesktop have a gtk3 branch

The panel support GTK-3 plugins since 4.12, but it core need to be upgraded to use gtk3.

Xfce4-power-manager

One of the most active project. Version 1.6 (released last month) is a complete port to gtk3 and gdbus, see http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/NEWS

Xfce4-notifyd

A GTK3 branch exist, you can read the thread on the ML : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-October/031504.html. I use it since few months, and it works pretty well :)

Xfce4-Appfinder

xfce4-appfinder progress to gtk3 : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-August/031438.html
Can you guess which one use GTK3 ? (hint: the left one ;)) xfce4-appfinder gtk3

Plugins

Some plugins are still active, and are already ported to GTK-3 (xfce4-indicator-plugin, xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin), as xfce4-panel support both gtk2 and gtk3 plugins.

Last months have seen new versions of xfce4-equake-plugin, xfce4-embed-plugin, xfce4-verve-plugin, xfce4-notes-plugin, xfce4-cpufreq-plugin.

One of the more usefull new plugin is the pulseaudio-plugin, a replacement for xfce4-mixer : http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin/, I use it and it works well.

xfce4-notifyd gtk3

Stay tuned !

Road to Xfce 4.14

  • April 12, 2016
  • Skunnyk

The looong road to xfce 4.14. I hope you still want some news about Xfce !
As usual, the xfce development is slow, has some organisation problems (only few members have access to servers, and are often not present), and lack “core” maintainers/mentors. But hey, we do our best :).

The bigger change for 4.14 is the port / upgrade to GTK+ 3.x.
It will be a like-for-like port. New and “big” features are postponed to 4.16.

You can read the thread on the ML https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-February/031146.html about the decision of only port to gtk3 and not introduce any new features for now.

The roadmap is available on the Wiki : http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.14/roadmap. The minimum requiered version has been fixed to be GTK+ 3.14.

Roadmap / Planned Features :

  • All components of -core will be ported to Gtk+ 3.
  • Replace dbus-glib with GDbus.
  • Review icon-names in all components and use consistent naming, following the fd.o spec where possible
  • Use symbolic icons for panel plugins and in apps where suitable
  • Replace deprecated widgets.

Here is a quick (and somewhat incomplete) overview of what is already done !

Core components

Work is on progress for core components, with “users” branches availables on http://git.xfce.org/ (xfce4-panel, libxfce4ui, xfce4-session, panel etc). Nothing really available for daily use though.

Lots of works on xfwm4’ compositor (in master), with implementation of vsync using OpenGL, libepoxy support, adding of DRI3/Present to the compositor, use of GLX for compositing instead of Xrender…

Libxfce4ui 4.12 already compile with gtk2 and gtk3 support, exo git master have a gtk3 preliminary support, garcon is already ported. xfdesktop have a gtk3 branch

The panel support GTK-3 plugins since 4.12, but it core need to be upgraded to use gtk3.

Xfce4-power-manager

One of the most active project. Version 1.6 (released last month) is a complete port to gtk3 and gdbus, see http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/NEWS

Xfce4-notifyd

A GTK3 branch exist, you can read the thread on the ML : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-October/031504.html. I use it since few months, and it works pretty well :)

Xfce4-Appfinder

xfce4-appfinder progress to gtk3 : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-August/031438.html
Can you guess which one use GTK3 ? (hint: the left one ;)) xfce4-appfinder gtk3

Plugins

Some plugins are still active, and are already ported to GTK-3 (xfce4-indicator-plugin, xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin), as xfce4-panel support both gtk2 and gtk3 plugins.

Last months have seen new versions of xfce4-equake-plugin, xfce4-embed-plugin, xfce4-verve-plugin, xfce4-notes-plugin, xfce4-cpufreq-plugin.

One of the more usefull new plugin is the pulseaudio-plugin, a replacement for xfce4-mixer : http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin/, I use it and it works well.

xfce4-notifyd gtk3

Stay tuned !

News from Xfce 4.12, part 3

  • February 19, 2015
  • Skunnyk

A bunch of news from the development of Xfce 4.12 !
Since my previous post in november (read it !) , many things have happened.
First, the most awaited news … wait for it… a date has been decided ! 4.12 will released by the last week end of February 2015 ! (yes, 1 week from now)

Now, I would like to draw your attention to a list of threads on the xfce4-dev mailist :

Core Apps :

xfce4-panel :

  • The intelligent panel hiding feature (see my previous post) has been released in 4.11.2 !

xfwm4 :

Oh wow, many commits, such features ! You can read the 4.11.3 announcement here

  • Add titleless maximization feature.
  • Client Side Decoration (CSD) support ! (Compositor need to be enabled). A screenshot with and without on gedit (an application that need CSD) CSD on xfwm4
  • Windows preview in alt+tab (Compositor need to be enabled too). Windows preview in alttab
  • Nice, right ? :)

xfce4-settings :

  • Release of 4.11.4
  • Add touchpad support with libinput (yes, already !)
  • Better monitor and multi monitor support
  • Add Gtk+ theme palettes in the appearance dialog (see screenshot)
  • Add previews for icon themes in appearance settings (see screenshot) Themes and icons preview

xfce4-session :

  • Bugfixes, bugfixes, bugfixes !
  • The “logind runtime detection to support suspend/hibernate” patch has been merged.
  • Release of 4.11.1

thunar :

  • Add support for the GTK 3 bookmarks file,
  • Bugfixes, support for binary file size units
  • Release of 1.6.4

gtk-xfce-engine :

xfce4-dev-tools :

  • Fixes, dependencies update etc
  • Release of 4.11.1

xfconf :

  • Not many exciting changes for this release, mostly translation updates, small fixes and code tweaks.. 4.11.0

Apps :

xfce4-screenshooter :

  • Support of imgur uploads ! Yes ! imgur upload
  • Release of 1.8.2 . Thank gaston !

xfce4-taskmanager :

  • Big cleanup of UI, with new treeview mode, general UI/graph overhaul and lot of bugfixes) xfce4-taskmanager
  • Release of 1.1.0 with all theses changes. Thanks gaston, ochosi and Cavalier

xfce4-power-manager :

Panel Plugins :

Some love for panel plugins, from Harald Judt and Landry Breuil, mostly build/bugfixes and translations updates :

As you can see, xfce development is more active than ever !
So be prepared to be amazed by 4.12 in a few weeks !

Sources :

News from Xfce 4.12, part 3

  • February 19, 2015
  • Skunnyk

A bunch of news from the development of Xfce 4.12 !
Since my previous post in november (read it !) , many things have happened.
First, the most awaited news … wait for it… a date has been decided ! 4.12 will released by the last week end of February 2015 ! (yes, 1 week from now)

Now, I would like to draw your attention to a list of threads on the xfce4-dev mailist :

Core Apps :

xfce4-panel :

  • The intelligent panel hiding feature (see my previous post) has been released in 4.11.2 !

xfwm4 :

Oh wow, many commits, such features ! You can read the 4.11.3 announcement here

  • Add titleless maximization feature.
  • Client Side Decoration (CSD) support ! (Compositor need to be enabled). A screenshot with and without on gedit (an application that need CSD) CSD on xfwm4
  • Windows preview in alt+tab (Compositor need to be enabled too). Windows preview in alttab
  • Nice, right ? :)

xfce4-settings :

  • Release of 4.11.4
  • Add touchpad support with libinput (yes, already !)
  • Better monitor and multi monitor support
  • Add Gtk+ theme palettes in the appearance dialog (see screenshot)
  • Add previews for icon themes in appearance settings (see screenshot) Themes and icons preview

xfce4-session :

  • Bugfixes, bugfixes, bugfixes !
  • The “logind runtime detection to support suspend/hibernate” patch has been merged.
  • Release of 4.11.1

thunar :

  • Add support for the GTK 3 bookmarks file,
  • Bugfixes, support for binary file size units
  • Release of 1.6.4

gtk-xfce-engine :

xfce4-dev-tools :

  • Fixes, dependencies update etc
  • Release of 4.11.1

xfconf :

  • Not many exciting changes for this release, mostly translation updates, small fixes and code tweaks.. 4.11.0

Apps :

xfce4-screenshooter :

  • Support of imgur uploads ! Yes ! imgur upload
  • Release of 1.8.2 . Thank gaston !

xfce4-taskmanager :

  • Big cleanup of UI, with new treeview mode, general UI/graph overhaul and lot of bugfixes) xfce4-taskmanager
  • Release of 1.1.0 with all theses changes. Thanks gaston, ochosi and Cavalier

xfce4-power-manager :

Panel Plugins :

Some love for panel plugins, from Harald Judt and Landry Breuil, mostly build/bugfixes and translations updates :

As you can see, xfce development is more active than ever !
So be prepared to be amazed by 4.12 in a few weeks !

Sources :

News from Xfce 4.12, part 3

  • February 19, 2015
  • Skunnyk

A bunch of news from the development of Xfce 4.12 !
Since my previous post in november (read it !) , many things have happened.
First, the most awaited news ... wait for it... a date has been decided ! 4.12 will released by the last week end of February 2015 ! (yes, 1 week from now)

Now, I would like to draw your attention to a list of threads on the xfce4-dev mailist :

Core Apps :

xfce4-panel :

  • The intelligent panel hiding feature (see my previous post) has been released in 4.11.2 !

xfwm4 :

Oh wow, many commits, such features ! You can read the 4.11.3 announcement here

  • Add titleless maximization feature.
  • Client Side Decoration (CSD) support ! (Compositor need to be enabled). A screenshot with and without on gedit (an application that need CSD) CSD on xfwm4
  • Windows preview in alt+tab (Compositor need to be enabled too). Windows preview in alttab
  • Nice, right ? :)

xfce4-settings :

  • Release of 4.11.4
  • Add touchpad support with libinput (yes, already !)
  • Better monitor and multi monitor support
  • Add Gtk+ theme palettes in the appearance dialog (see screenshot)
  • Add previews for icon themes in appearance settings (see screenshot) Themes and icons preview

xfce4-session :

  • Bugfixes, bugfixes, bugfixes !
  • The "logind runtime detection to support suspend/hibernate" patch has been merged.
  • Release of 4.11.1

thunar :

  • Add support for the GTK 3 bookmarks file,
  • Bugfixes, support for binary file size units
  • Release of 1.6.4

gtk-xfce-engine :

xfce4-dev-tools :

  • Fixes, dependencies update etc
  • Release of 4.11.1

xfconf :

  • Not many exciting changes for this release, mostly translation updates, small fixes and code tweaks.. 4.11.0

Apps :

xfce4-screenshooter :

  • Support of imgur uploads ! Yes ! imgur upload
  • Release of 1.8.2 . Thank gaston !

xfce4-taskmanager :

  • Big cleanup of UI, with new treeview mode, general UI/graph overhaul and lot of bugfixes) xfce4-taskmanager
  • Release of 1.1.0 with all theses changes. Thanks gaston, ochosi and Cavalier

xfce4-power-manager :

Panel Plugins :

Some love for panel plugins, from Harald Judt and Landry Breuil, mostly build/bugfixes and translations updates :

As you can see, xfce development is more active than ever !
So be prepared to be amazed by 4.12 in a few weeks !

Sources :