• the memory leak bug affecting gdm3 upstream GNOME bug seems to have bee

    From =?UTF-8?B?c2hpcmlzaCDgpLbgpL/gpLDgp@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 25 16:20:01 2019
    Dear all,

    Few months back I came to know of #895990 specifically while trying to
    install gdm3. The bug is still outstanding and from the discussion
    appears needs to have other patches which are not in libgs which is
    part of gnome-shell. It referenced LP bug 1672297 which in turn
    referenced debian upstream bug 77537 on gitlab.com

    The upstream bug doesn't seem to be visible . Going to [1] I get a 404
    . Can somebody apprise of the latest situation on the bug as well as
    fix LP if the bug has been renumbered or something. Looking forward to
    know.

    1. https://gitlab.gnome.org/777537

    --
    Regards,
    Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
    My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com

    E493 D466 6D67 59F5 1FD0 930F 870E 9A5B 5869 609C

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Simon McVittie@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 25 18:40:01 2019
    On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 at 15:17:44 +0000, shirish शिरीष wrote:
    Few months back I came to know of #895990 specifically while trying to install gdm3. The bug is still outstanding

    Sorry, "GNOME Shell memory use increases" is not really an actionable bug.
    It's a symptom that can appear for multiple reasons, and neither upstream
    nor Debian can fix instances of that symptom without *considerably*
    more information.

    (An analogy: if you report a bug that just says "Firefox crashed", then
    that is not an actionable bug, and you will not get useful results by
    reporting it. However, if you report a bug "Firefox crashes when I visit gnome.org, with this message ... and this backtrace ..." then that's
    specific enough to track, and is something that its maintainers might
    be able to fix.)

    The gjs Javascript runtime uses garbage-collection, not
    reference-counting, so it does not return unused allocated memory
    to the system until an unpredictable time has passed. That cannot be
    fixed without extensive design changes: if I understand correctly, the Javascript language definition means that all Javascript implementations
    must use garbage-collection, so as long as GNOME Shell is partly
    implemented in Javascript, unused allocated memory will not be returned
    to the system immediately.

    If you are aware of rapid memory growth when you carry out a specific
    action (perhaps repeatedly), that might be a useful bug report: please
    report it as a bug, with a title that is as specific as possible,
    and specific steps to reproduce it. For example, if memory use grows
    when you open and close the menu in the top right corner by clicking it repeatedly, and does not return to normal after leaving the Shell idle
    for a few minutes, then that would be an actionable bug report.

    If you are aware of a patch or commit that fixes a memory leak, and
    has been applied upstream but not in (some specific version in) Debian,
    that is also a useful, actionable bug report.

    A non-specific report like "a lot of memory gets allocated" is not
    really something that we can ever fix or close, so it is not a useful
    way to improve GNOME; and in the past, reports of that form have tended
    to attract replies that mix up multiple root causes in an unhelpful way, causing developers to either spend a lot of time dealing with replies
    (which is time that they would have preferred to spend fixing bugs!),
    or ignore the bug report and work on something more rewarding instead.

    and from the discussion
    appears needs to have other patches which are not in libgs which is
    part of gnome-shell. It referenced LP bug 1672297 which in turn
    referenced debian upstream bug 77537 on gitlab.com

    You seem to be confusing a lot of different things. Debian bugs are not
    the same as upstream bugs, gitlab.com is not the same as GNOME's
    instance of Gitlab, bugs in GNOME's instance of Gitlab are unlikely
    to have 5-digit bug numbers, and bugs in GNOME's old Bugzilla bug
    tracker mostly don't have 5-digit bug numbers either.

    There is no library called libgs. You might mean libgjs, which is part
    of gjs and is used by GNOME Shell, or libgnome-shell, which is part of
    GNOME Shell.

    Please try to be precise.

    The upstream bug doesn't seem to be visible . Going to [1] I get a 404
    1. https://gitlab.gnome.org/777537

    Getting a 404 for that address is expected. That is not the format of a
    GNOME Gitlab bug URL.

    You might be looking for
    <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=777537> which was converted
    into <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/64>.

    The best summaries there are <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/64#note_295977>
    and <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/64#note_296648>.

    smcv

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From =?UTF-8?B?c2hpcmlzaCDgpLbgpL/gpLDgp@21:1/5 to Simon McVittie on Mon Nov 25 20:00:02 2019
    Replying in-line :-

    On 25/11/2019, Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> wrote:
    On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 at 15:17:44 +0000, shirish शिरीष wrote:
    Few months back I came to know of #895990 specifically while trying to
    install gdm3. The bug is still outstanding

    Sorry, "GNOME Shell memory use increases" is not really an actionable bug. It's a symptom that can appear for multiple reasons, and neither upstream
    nor Debian can fix instances of that symptom without *considerably*
    more information.

    (An analogy: if you report a bug that just says "Firefox crashed", then
    that is not an actionable bug, and you will not get useful results by reporting it. However, if you report a bug "Firefox crashes when I visit gnome.org, with this message ... and this backtrace ..." then that's specific enough to track, and is something that its maintainers might
    be able to fix.)

    The gjs Javascript runtime uses garbage-collection, not
    reference-counting, so it does not return unused allocated memory
    to the system until an unpredictable time has passed. That cannot be
    fixed without extensive design changes: if I understand correctly, the Javascript language definition means that all Javascript implementations
    must use garbage-collection, so as long as GNOME Shell is partly
    implemented in Javascript, unused allocated memory will not be returned
    to the system immediately.

    If you are aware of rapid memory growth when you carry out a specific
    action (perhaps repeatedly), that might be a useful bug report: please
    report it as a bug, with a title that is as specific as possible,
    and specific steps to reproduce it. For example, if memory use grows
    when you open and close the menu in the top right corner by clicking it repeatedly, and does not return to normal after leaving the Shell idle
    for a few minutes, then that would be an actionable bug report.

    If you are aware of a patch or commit that fixes a memory leak, and
    has been applied upstream but not in (some specific version in) Debian,
    that is also a useful, actionable bug report.

    A non-specific report like "a lot of memory gets allocated" is not
    really something that we can ever fix or close, so it is not a useful
    way to improve GNOME; and in the past, reports of that form have tended
    to attract replies that mix up multiple root causes in an unhelpful way, causing developers to either spend a lot of time dealing with replies
    (which is time that they would have preferred to spend fixing bugs!),
    or ignore the bug report and work on something more rewarding instead.

    and from the discussion
    appears needs to have other patches which are not in libgs which is
    part of gnome-shell. It referenced LP bug 1672297 which in turn
    referenced debian upstream bug 77537 on gitlab.com

    You seem to be confusing a lot of different things. Debian bugs are not
    the same as upstream bugs, gitlab.com is not the same as GNOME's
    instance of Gitlab, bugs in GNOME's instance of Gitlab are unlikely
    to have 5-digit bug numbers, and bugs in GNOME's old Bugzilla bug
    tracker mostly don't have 5-digit bug numbers either.

    There is no library called libgs. You might mean libgjs, which is part
    of gjs and is used by GNOME Shell, or libgnome-shell, which is part of
    GNOME Shell.

    Please try to be precise.

    The upstream bug doesn't seem to be visible . Going to [1] I get a 404
    1. https://gitlab.gnome.org/777537


    Dear Simon,

    Thank you for responding so quickly and in such a detailed way.

    That was the link that launchpad gave me. See the gnome-bugs link as
    given at https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-shell/+bug/1672297

    Getting a 404 for that address is expected. That is not the format of a
    GNOME Gitlab bug URL.

    You might be looking for
    <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=777537> which was converted
    into <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/64>.

    The best summaries there are <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/64#note_295977>
    and <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/64#note_296648>.

    smcv


    In light of the above detailed explanation, why is the bug in Debian
    still open. Shouldn't it be closed then? I think you covered all the
    points eloquently so it should be closed and let people open when they
    have specific issues.

    I just had a look at the GNOME wiki page on Debian [1] but that I
    guess is probably another thread/discussion in itself. For e.g. the
    3.34 page doesn't seem to be tracked therein [2] . It also would be
    nice for e.g. if there was any GNOME debugging wiki page but that
    would be part of the documentation team itself. If there is an
    existence of such a page please let me know. FWIW, I did try to trawl
    through [3] but without much to show for it :(

    1. https://wiki.debian.org/Gnome
    2. https://people.debian.org/~fpeters/gnome/debian-gnome-3.34-status.html
    3. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianPackage?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=Gnome

    --
    Regards,
    Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
    My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com

    E493 D466 6D67 59F5 1FD0 930F 870E 9A5B 5869 609C

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)