[maemo-developers] Beware 'Personal launcher'

[From: Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

ext Niels Breet wrote:
>> For some strange reason its memory usage evened out after it's eaten
>> about all there is.  It's possible that there was some triggering condition
>> for this, I don't know.
>>
> I have installed and tested the application on my tablet and I really
> can't trigger the behavior.
> 
> What did you do to trigger this condition? Did you overlap applets? Did
> you install other applets? Can you reproduce it on a fresh firmware?

Asked for more details:
1. Only personal launcher is enabled and device is booted after
    enabling it
2. "Use resizable layout" enabled
3. Launcher has enough icons (in one column, icon size = 64)
    that it it's higher than screen

When launcher is disabled, Desktop crashes.  The leakage and
crash are 100% reproducible.

2&3 seems to be the cause for this.  It seems that the resize stuff
in the applet is broken and the constant applet flicker is a symptom
of this bug:
- I think the applet leaks on each resize
- It doesn't stop resizing when the area doesn't fit into screen
   (the area size could be limited to the screen)
- Resizing doesn't handle applet unload correctly
   (disabling happening when applet resizes)

Also, making icon size smaller after this so that things fit into screen
doesn't help, the applet size allocation remains still higher than
screen (can be seen from the flickering and when dragging the applet)
i.e. it still leaks & crashes.


> I talked to the author. He used your mem-testing scripts and valgrind and
> couldn't reproduce it either. Nor did he receive any complains from the
> about 11000 downloads he had.

Now that I was demonstrated the issue[1], I have to admit that the 
applet configuration was pretty unusual and it's unlikely that people
would leave the applet enabled configured like that.

(And the applet seems pretty nice, I might starting to use it myself.)


	- Eero

[1] Note to myself. Always check things yourself.