gvim and karmic ubuntu... with a fix for you.

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gvim in ubuntu karmic koala is really annoying. It prints out a bunch of gtk warnings each time you call it. However thanks to someone making a patch, you can clean it up. It seems that the fix isn't going to come out until the next ubuntu.

** (gvim:13354): CRITICAL **: gtk_form_set_static_gravity: assertion `static_gravity_supported' failed

** (gvim:13354): CRITICAL **: gtk_form_set_static_gravity: assertion `static_gravity_supported' failed

** (gvim:13354): CRITICAL **: gtk_form_set_static_gravity: assertion `static_gravity_supported' failed

** (gvim:13354): CRITICAL **: gtk_form_set_static_gravity: assertion `static_gravity_supported' failed

** (gvim:13354): CRITICAL **: gtk_form_set_static_gravity: assertion `static_gravity_supported' failed


Very annoying to see that every time you edit a file.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vim/+bug/402188


So instead of switching to arch linux, or gentoo linux... or one of the other developer centric distros there is a patch! ya for patches people make and share :)

Grab the debdiff to apply the patch. Check a look at the packaging guide for details on how to build with a debdiff patch.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuPackagingGuide/BuildFromDebdiff


NOTE: please back up your system before trying anything here. Also DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME AS SOMETHING MAY GO HORRIBLY WRONG!!!

I'll run through what to do here:


cd ~
$ mkdir vim-gnome
$ cd vim-gnome

$ wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/35716623/vim_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1.debdiff


$ md5sum vim_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1.debdiff
abdb13517ec59a1a0b74b55b977e0139 vim_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1.debdiff

Check that your md5sum is the same as this. Hey, why not look at the patch to review it for goodness? Well you don't have to, but it can be interesting looking at bug fixes.

We need to install all the tools required for building ubuntu packages...
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential fakeroot devscripts

Then grab the source for vim-gnome (or vim-gtk if you don't want to use the gnome version... replace vim-gnome with vim-gtk in all things below if you want that instead).
$ apt-get source vim-gnome


When I installed the libraries needed to build the source package...
sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gnome
I got a 'Segmentation fault'. eek. Well, time for a restart... It seems Karmic isn't all that stable for me with apt-get, dpkg and friends.

Ok, back from the restart of the computer.
Let us try it again...
sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gnome

Ya! it's working. I have to download about 100MB of packages. ... wait 10 minutes... then everything is downloaded and installed.



Apply the patch...

$ cd vim-7.2.245/
$ patch -p1 < ../vim_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1.debdiff


Ok, lets build it again after we've applied this patch. This build step can take a long while!

$ debuild -uc -us

Ok, there's no test step... since ubuntu doesn't really have a way to run automated test suites (that I know of).

At least lintian is run and tells you something.

It should produce a bunch of .deb files for you.

vim_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb         vim-gtk_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb
vim-common_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb  vim-gui-common_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_all.deb
vim-dbg_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb     vim-nox_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb
vim-doc_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_all.deb      vim-runtime_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_all.deb
vim-gnome_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb   vim-tiny_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb


Now to install the relevant packages...
$ sudo dpkg -i vim_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb vim-common_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb vim-gui-common_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_all.deb vim-runtime_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_all.deb vim-gnome_7.2.245-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb

Ya! no more annoying message :)

Now, if someone made a PPA other people on different architectures could also easily update their binaries. Or perhaps the ubuntu folks will make it nice for gvim developers, and apply the patch themselves.

Comments

Dave Kirby said…
Alternatively for a quick fix you can either discard all error messages with:

gvim 2>/dev/null

But this may discard error messages you actually care about, so to only discard the error message in question:

(gvim -f 2>&1 | grep -v "static_gravity") &

The -f stops gvim forking to a background process so you can pipe it through grep, then the whole pipeline is forked.
10:29 AM
Anonymous said…
There is a package built with this fix in a PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~jk-ozlabs/+archive/vim
11:32 AM
Robert said…
I get that same error on Fedora 12.
2:23 PM
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