error while comiling code using gtklayershell

[licoricee]

this is the code

import gintro/[gtklayershell]
echo getProtocolVersion()

and while compiling with nimble build i get this error

  Verifying dependencies for layershell_test@0.1.0
      Info: Dependency on gintro@#head already satisfied
  Verifying dependencies for gintro@#head
   Building layershell_test/layershell_test using c backend
/home/luke/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/harfbuzz.nim(2232, 35) Error: expression cannot be cast to Face00=object
       Tip: 3 messages have been suppressed, use --verbose to show them.
     Error: Build failed for package: layershell_test
        ... Execution failed with exit code 1
        ... Command: /home/luke/.nimble/bin/nim c --colors:on --noNimblePath -d:NimblePkgVersion=0.1.0 --path:'/home/luke/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head' --hints:off -o:/home/luke/layershell_test/layershell_test /home/luke/layershell_test/src/layershell_test.nim

[licoricee]

another thing, im on harfbuzz 4.4.1-1

[StefanSalewski]

Thanks for reporting. I have to admit that I can currently not remember what gtklayershell is, maybe we have not a single test for it. I guess someone requested it years ago, and then vanished soon. I am not sure if layershell is available for my Gentoo Linux as a package, maybe I have to install from git sources. But I will try to test soon.

My general recommendation for people new to GTK or people that do not intend to do some serious stuff: just use another GUI toolkit, Nim has 20 of them, and for toy apps these may be simpler to use then GTK.

[StefanSalewski]

It is available for Gentoo Linux now, at least in version 0.6: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/gui-libs/gtk-layer-shell. That makes testings easier for me -- currently it is not installed on my box. I hope it is not an v0.7 only issue.

[StefanSalewski]

Seems that the Gentoo version supports only GTK3 still, and they ship only the GIR file for v0.1:

/usr/share/gir-1.0/GtkLayerShell-0.1.gir

  <include name="Gtk" version="3.0"/>
  <package name="gtk-layer-shell-0"/>
  <c:include name="gtk-layer-shell/gtk-layer-shell.h"/>
  <namespace name="GtkLayerShell"
             version="0.1"
             shared-library="libgtk-layer-shell.so.0"
             c:identifier-prefixes="GtkLayerShell"
             c:symbol-prefixes="gtk_layer">

Have you managed to install a version for GTK4? And do you really intent to do serious work with it?

[StefanSalewski]

The bad news is, that I can not reproduce your issue with v0.6:

$ cat t.nim 
import gintro/[gtklayershell]
echo getProtocolVersion()
salewski@hx90 /tmp/hhh $ nim c -f t.nim 
Hint: used config file '/home/salewski/Nim/config/nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file '/home/salewski/Nim/config/config.nims' [Conf]
..................................................................................................
CC: ../../home/salewski/Nim/lib/std/private/digitsutils.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/Nim/lib/system/formatfloat.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/Nim/lib/system/dollars.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/Nim/lib/std/syncio.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/Nim/lib/system.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/glib.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/Nim/lib/pure/times.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/gobject.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/cairo.nim
CC: ../../home/salewski/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/gtklayershell.nim
CC: t.nim
Hint:  [Link]
Hint: gc: refc; opt: none (DEBUG BUILD, `-d:release` generates faster code)
194008 lines; 2.379s; 350.879MiB peakmem; proj: /tmp/hhh/t.nim; out: /tmp/hhh/t [SuccessX]
salewski@hx90 /tmp/hhh $ ls -lt
total 128
-rwxr-xr-x 1 salewski salewski 126624 Jul  8 08:23 t
-rw-r--r-- 1 salewski salewski     56 Jul  8 08:22 t.nim
salewski@hx90 /tmp/hhh $ ./t
0

So I may have to install latest v0.7 from git. For the case that you are just playing around with things, having fun finding stuff that fails, I would suggest that we wait with the fix til end of this year. I have just migrated to a new box, as my old one did some random reboots in the last weeks, and I have to prepare the box to allow installation of additional stuff in /opt from git.

[licoricee]

ok i can always try downgrading layershell, but i dont think its a layershell issue tho it seems to be with harfbuzz

[StefanSalewski]

Interesting. I have currently harfbuzz 4.3, but Gentoo provides unstable 4.4.1. I can try to install that this evening and then try again.

[StefanSalewski]

compiling with nimble build

Well I never do that, I always use "nim c myprog.nim". I have no idea for the error message "expression cannot be cast to Face00=object". What is your Nim compiler version? And are you using Linux or Windows/Mac?

[StefanSalewski]

Yes, you were right:

nim c t.nim 
Hint: used config file '/home/salewski/Nim/config/nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file '/home/salewski/Nim/config/config.nims' [Conf]
..........................................................................................
/home/salewski/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/harfbuzz.nim(2232, 35) Error: expression cannot be cast to Face00=object

I was not aware that we have a harfbuzz package for gintro at all. Will investigate this evening.

[StefanSalewski]

The whole harfbuzz.nim looks strange. Why start all the type names in lower case?

[StefanSalewski]

My current guess is, that the defined types in harfbuzz and freetype are very different from the other GTK modules. For example

https://freetype.org/freetype2/docs/reference/ft2-base_interface.html#ft_face

typedef struct FT_FaceRec_* FT_Face;

So here the defined type is already a pointer! That is very different from the ordinary GTK modules as in

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/blob/main/gtk/gtkbutton.h

typedef struct _GtkButton GtkButton;

Fixing that in the generator script gen.nim may be a lot of work, maybe more than 100 hours? I have no idea, and I wonder if that makes sense at all, as we have no real users for gintro. The basic working shape of gen.nim was created 6 years ago, initially only for the GTK core modules. I can currently absolutely not remember which changes would be needed to fix these freetype and hardbuzz issues.

[StefanSalewski]

I just noticed that with latest harfbuzz all my gintro apps fail to compile. Well we can fix that manually, that it make the other modules compile and work with:

cat /home/salewski/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/freetype2.nim 
# dependencies:
# immediate dependencies:
# libraries:
# 
{.warning[UnusedImport]: off.}

const Lib = ""
{.pragma: libprag, cdecl, dynlib: Lib.}

type
  Bitmap00* {.pure.} = object
  Bitmap* = ref object
    impl*: ptr Bitmap00
    ignoreFinalizer*: bool

type
  Face00* {.pure.} = ptr object
  Face* = ref object
    impl*: Face00
    ignoreFinalizer*: bool

type
  Library00* {.pure.} = object
  Library* = ref object
    impl*: ptr Library00
    ignoreFinalizer*: bool

proc libraryVersion*() {.
    importc: "FT_Library_Version", libprag.}

As long as you do not explicitly use freetype and harfbuzz, with that fix layershell may work for you?

[licoricee]

Oh thanks I'll try it out as soon as I get a chance! Thanks for your help with this

[StefanSalewski]

I think I will start by asking at the Gnome forum, maybe Mr Bassi or Mr Droege can give us some hints:

https://discourse.gnome.org/t/the-gintro-nim-bindings-do-not-compile-with-latest-harfbuzz-4-4-1/10408

[StefanSalewski]

OK, should be fixed now. At least my own apps seems to compile and run again.

You can try with

nimble uninstall gintro
nimble install gintro@#head

As you may have noticed, there was no reaction at Gnome forum -- maybe Mr. Bassi and Mr. Droege are in vacation or have retired. So I applied this ugly fix:

$ diff ~/gintrotest/test/gen.nim gen.nim 
3c3
< # v 0.9.9 2022-JUL-10
---
> # v 0.9.9 2022-MAY-17
917,925c917
<   var p = gTypeInfoIsPointer(t)
< 
<   if not p:
<     let tag = gTypeInfoGetTag(t)
<     if tag == GITypeTag.INTERFACE:
<       let iface = gTypeInfoGetInterface(t)
<       if gBaseInfoGetNamespace(iface) == "freetype2" and gBaseInfoGetName(iface) == "Face":
<         p = true # see issue https://discourse.gnome.org/t/the-gintro-nim-bindings-do-not-compile-with-latest-harfbuzz-4-4-1/10408
< 
---
>   let p = gTypeInfoIsPointer(t)

With this patch, we get now

diff nim_gi/harfbuzz.nim /home/salewski/.nimble/pkgs/gintro-#head/gintro/harfbuzz.nim
2227c2227
< proc hb_ft_face_create(ftFace: ptr freetype2.Face00; destroy: proc(userData: pointer) {.cdecl.}): ptr faceT00 {.
---
> proc hb_ft_face_create(ftFace: freetype2.Face00; destroy: proc(userData: pointer) {.cdecl.}): ptr faceT00 {.
2232c2232
<   result.impl = hb_ft_face_create(cast[ptr freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl), destroy)
---
>   result.impl = hb_ft_face_create(cast[freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl), destroy)
2234c2234
< proc hb_ft_face_create_cached(ftFace: ptr freetype2.Face00): ptr faceT00 {.
---
> proc hb_ft_face_create_cached(ftFace: freetype2.Face00): ptr faceT00 {.
2239c2239
<   result.impl = hb_ft_face_create_cached(cast[ptr freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl))
---
>   result.impl = hb_ft_face_create_cached(cast[freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl))
2241c2241
< proc hb_ft_face_create_referenced(ftFace: ptr freetype2.Face00): ptr faceT00 {.
---
> proc hb_ft_face_create_referenced(ftFace: freetype2.Face00): ptr faceT00 {.
2246c2246
<   result.impl = hb_ft_face_create_referenced(cast[ptr freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl))
---
>   result.impl = hb_ft_face_create_referenced(cast[freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl))
2254c2254
< proc hb_ft_font_create(ftFace: ptr freetype2.Face00; destroy: proc(userData: pointer) {.cdecl.}): ptr fontT00 {.
---
> proc hb_ft_font_create(ftFace: freetype2.Face00; destroy: proc(userData: pointer) {.cdecl.}): ptr fontT00 {.
2259c2259
<   result.impl = hb_ft_font_create(cast[ptr freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl), destroy)
---
>   result.impl = hb_ft_font_create(cast[freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl), destroy)
2261c2261
< proc hb_ft_font_create_referenced(ftFace: ptr freetype2.Face00): ptr fontT00 {.
---
> proc hb_ft_font_create_referenced(ftFace: freetype2.Face00): ptr fontT00 {.
2266c2266
<   result.impl = hb_ft_font_create_referenced(cast[ptr freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl))
---
>   result.impl = hb_ft_font_create_referenced(cast[freetype2.Face00](ftFace.impl))

The other modules remain unchanged, so I have not done further testings.

Another question is, if we should try to make all the harfbuzz data types starting with upper case. But I think I will not try that this year, maybe next. You may try that your own, should be not difficult. maybe some work. And may result in new trouble of course.

I think I will tag this latest release as v0.99 soon, before other do a plain "nimble install gintro" and get the same trouble. Problem is, that then next tag is already 1.0, and I hesitate to call it already a 1.0 version.

[licoricee]

Oh ok I'm on vacation now so I can't test it :/ but thanks for your help! As soon as I get back I'll be sure to test it