FFE: Add support to g-p-m for controlling keyboard backlight via upower in natty

Bug #724324 reported by Alex Murray
10
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Wishlist
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Bug Description

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

The version of upower (0.9.8) in Natty now has support for controlling keyboard backlights via dbus, and upstream g-p-m git HEAD (soon to be released 3.0 for GNOME 3) just added support for controlling these, however the version of g-p-m shipped in Natty (2.32) does not have any such support.

Keyboard backlight support was previously available via HAL in Hardy but was then removed when the dehalsification started and no such support has been available since, and as such adding support to g-p-m in Natty is (and has been for a while) greatly needed.

I have written a patch against g-p-m 2.32 which provides such support and is similar to the support recently added to g-p-m 3.0.

This patch adds a new GpmBacklightKbd object to g-p-m (which is based on the existing GpmBacklight object which controls the LCD backlight) to control the UPower KbdBacklight DBus interface and the patch provides support for:

* controlling the backlight via the appropriate backlight up / down buttons
* automatically dimming the backlight on idle when the lcd is dimmed
* automatically shutting of the keyboard backlight when the lcd is shut off
* displaying the keyboard brightness level via notify-osd (like we do for lcd backlight level) when changed by the user

I have tested this patch significantly myself over numerous days with no issues. After a quick post on the ubuntuforums (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1694678) at least one other user has also confirmed this patch as working well and providing a reasonable improvement over current sub-optimum methods of controlling the keyboard backlight (such as using pommed, which is only available for MacBook machines and does not support other laptops with keyboard backlights such as various Asus models, which the upower + g-p-m method does).

I am requesting a FFE to merge the attached patch into g-p-m in Natty to provide such support.

A build log for g-p-m 2.32 in Natty using the attached patch is available my ppa (http://launchpadlibrarian.net/65256989/buildlog_ubuntu-natty-i386.gnome-power-manager_2.32.0-2ubuntu2_BUILDING.txt.gz).

Tags: patch
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Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :
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Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

I've got packages in my ppa to test this implementation under maverick if interested (currently waiting to build...) https://launchpad.net/~alexmurray/+archive/ppa

tags: added: patch
Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Has this been discussed upstream? It would be good to get that accepted (at least in principle) before accepting a distro-patch of this size.

If you could get some agreement with upstream, I'd be quite happy to take this.

In any case, great work! Thanks!

Changed in gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

A similar patch has been sent upstream http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-power-manager-list/2011-February/msg00017.html which should hopefully get accepted - the upstream codebase is quite a bit different now after transitioning to Gtk 3 and other Gnome 3 related changed so the patch here is a bit different but it achieves the same outcomes. Would be great to see it get included for natty.

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Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

Upstream have accepted the updated patch (http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-power-manager/commit/?id=7e5fedb32bfb9dc6428c5b0eb21ef48a27602a27) so there is no worries that we are deviating too far with this extra patch against 2.32.

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Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Awesome, thanks. I'm quite happy to review and upload the backported patch, but unfortunately it needs a Feature Freeze exception now (we went in to Feature Freeze on Thursday).

Would you mind preparing a freeze exception? (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess for details).

Thanks

Revision history for this message
Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

No worries Chris, will see what I can get together - should I file a separate bug report for the FFE or just put all the required information into this one?

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

This bug is fine for tracking the FFe

Alex Murray (alexmurray)
summary: - g-p-m should add support for controlling keyboard backlight via upower
+ FFE: Add support to g-p-m for controlling keyboard backlight via upower
in natty
Revision history for this message
Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

Have updated bug description with info for the FFE. Will update again soon once I confirm the patch is correct for Natty.

description: updated
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Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

Have just finished successfully building and testing the patch in Natty (see description for link to build log). Any update on the FFE? Any more info required?

description: updated
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Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Thanks, I've subscribed the release team now

Changed in gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → New
Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

This looks fine to me at this point; accepted upstream, it is a "leaf" feature with no dependencies, and in the worst case we can back it out if there are troubles. Approved.

Changed in gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

@pitti - Any update on when this will be uploaded?

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Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

I will sponsor this one tomorrow

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Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

Thanks Chris.

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Alex Murray (alexmurray) wrote :

@Chris - sorry to bug you but just wanted to ping you again about sponsoring this.... Thanks.

Changed in gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-power-manager - 2.32.0-2ubuntu2

---------------
gnome-power-manager (2.32.0-2ubuntu2) natty; urgency=low

  [ Alex Murray <email address hidden> ]
  * FFe: LP: #724324 - Add support to g-p-m for controlling keyboard
    backlight via upower.
    - add debian/patches/15-keyboard-backlight-support.patch
    - update debian/patches/series
 -- Chris Coulson <email address hidden> Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:04:40 +0000

Changed in gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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