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Bug 461710 - Do not set GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY environment variable.
Do not set GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY environment variable.
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: jhbuild
Classification: Infrastructure
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Jhbuild maintainers
Jhbuild QA
Depends on: 435325
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2007-07-30 08:04 UTC by Wouter Bolsterlee (uws)
Modified: 2007-07-31 08:41 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Wouter Bolsterlee (uws) 2007-07-30 08:04:26 UTC
This bug is based on bug 435325#8, in which Li Yuan (atk developer) states:

> Why GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY is automatically turned on by jhbuild? If
> it want to start applications with A11Y support, the official way
> is to set gconf key. GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY should only be turned on by
> A11Y developers who want to see these messages.

So, I think jhbuild should not set GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY=1.
Comment 1 Frederic Peters 2007-07-30 08:27:44 UTC
It was added for automated testing with LDTP and Dogtail, which are based on
the accessibility framework.  I really don't want to disable that feature,
documenting how it is required to enable accessibility and so on if the only
inconvenience are two lines printed on program startups.
Comment 2 Li Yuan 2007-07-30 08:29:14 UTC
Yes. On GNOME2.16 or earlier, user can set GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY=1 to enable accessibility support if the hole desktop's accessibility is not enabled (the at-spi-registryd is started by bonobo). On GNOME2.18, we change the way it works. registryd should only be started by gnome-session through exec. That means setting GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY=1 to enable accessibility is no longer supported. So GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY should now only be used by accessibility developers.
Comment 3 Frederic Peters 2007-07-30 08:32:57 UTC
I am note sure I understand everything yet.  As I understand it you mean it is no longer required to have GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY set to 1 for LDTP and Dogtail tests to work.  Is this true ?
Comment 4 Li Yuan 2007-07-30 08:50:08 UTC
Hi Frederic, sorry I didn't describe it clearly.  There are two ways to enable the whole desktop's accessibility, set the gconf key "/desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility" to true or set GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY to true. Both of them should works. 

So if you have set the gconf key, then setting GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY is not required. And I think a better way is to set the gconf key to true for normal desktop uses. 

Can we use the gconf key way instead of the environment variable way?
Comment 5 Frederic Peters 2007-07-30 08:59:37 UTC
Note jhbuild is not interested in the whole desktop accessibility, just interested in running LDTP/Dogtail tests, and it often doesn't have the whole desktop stack running.  What should jhbuild do to tell gedit (or whatever) to run with accessibility enabled ?
Comment 6 Li Yuan 2007-07-30 09:08:01 UTC
Is there gnome-session running when LDTP/Dogtail testing?
Comment 7 Frederic Peters 2007-07-30 09:09:56 UTC
No gnome-session, sorry.
Comment 8 Li Yuan 2007-07-30 09:12:50 UTC
Then I wonder how at-spi-registryd is started? Normally it is started by gnome-session.
Comment 9 Frederic Peters 2007-07-30 09:24:24 UTC
Well, LDTP tests were a summe of code project from last year, so 2.14, which if I understand things correctly didn't have at-spi-registryd.  Perhaps I shouldn't
let jhbuild care and delegate correct initialisation of the subsystem to LDTP
and Dogtail.

I'll ponder over this for a few hours and will remove the GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY settings afterwards.
Comment 10 Li Yuan 2007-07-30 09:47:53 UTC
Thanks. I think LDTP/Dogtail do not only need to tell applications to start with accessibility support but also need to start at-spi-registryd to enable the accessibility frame work, or there is no use to only start applications with accessibility support.
Now, at-spi-registryd is started by gnome-session on normal desktop. Maybe LDTP/Dogtail start it by itself, if so, setting GTK_MODULES to "gail:atk-bridge" can tell applications to load accessibility libraries. But if at-spi-registryd is started by gnome-session in LDTP/Dogtail, we still need to tell gnome-session to start it, by setting either the environment variable or the gconf key.
Comment 11 Loïc Minier 2007-07-30 10:14:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
> Note jhbuild is not interested in the whole desktop accessibility, just
> interested in running LDTP/Dogtail tests, and it often doesn't have the whole
> desktop stack running.  What should jhbuild do to tell gedit (or whatever) to
> run with accessibility enabled ?

Frédéric, perhaps it would enhance jhbuild to have a way to override GConf settings in some cases?  This could be done by pre-pending a GConf path with jhbuild specific settings.

(I understand this might be a way to turn on a11y if it's still useful.)
Comment 12 Frederic Peters 2007-07-30 10:38:19 UTC
Loïc, as I understand it, the GConf key is looked at by gnome-session, so it wouldn't work for the "LDTP starting gedit for testing" usecase.

But that idea of overriding GConf settings, I'll keep it for other things :)
Comment 13 Willie Walker 2007-07-30 15:08:16 UTC
I realize this bug is for the GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY environment variable.  At the 2006 GNOME Boston Summit, however, we agreed to enable accessibility by default in GNOME development/unstable builds.  This has since been implemented (I believe) as part of bug 362457.
Comment 14 Li Yuan 2007-07-31 02:44:34 UTC
From  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=76528, this has been done by setting gconf key. So I think it is OK that don't set GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY.
Comment 15 Wouter Bolsterlee (uws) 2007-07-31 08:33:13 UTC
I'd say that jhbuild can set the env var only when needed, i.e. when a "test" (or whatever it is called) action is executed, not for every action (e.g. build, buildone, run).
Comment 16 Frederic Peters 2007-07-31 08:41:46 UTC
I am still not sure this is ok for tests, but at least this won't be a regression and you will have a clean environment in other (most) cases.

2007-07-31  Frederic Peters  <fpeters@0d.be>

        * jhbuild/config.py, jhbuild/modtypes/testmodule.py: added forgotten
        test module, required to run LDTP and Dogtail tests; use it to set
        accessibility environment variables (closes: #461710)