Intro:

Hi everyone, it’s the end of GSoc! I had a great experience throughout this whole process. I’ve learned so much. This is essentially the ‘final report’ for GSoC, but not my final report for this project in general by a long shot. I still have so much more I want to do, but here is what I’ve done so far.

Project:

JSON, YAML, and/or XML emitting and parsing integration into Vala’s compiler.

Mentor:

I would like to thank Lorenz Wildberg for being my mentor for this project, as well as the Vala community .

Description:

The main objective of this project is to integrate direct syntax support for parsing and emitting JSON, XML, and/or YAML formats in Vala. This will cut back the boilerplate code, making it more user-friendly and efficient for developers working with these formatting languages.

What I’ve done:

Research

• I’ve done significant research in both JSON and YAML parsing and emitting in various languages like C#, Java, Rust and Python.
• Looked into how Vala currently handles JSON using JSON GLib classes, and I then modelled the C code after the examples I collected.
• Modelled the JSON module after other modules in the codegen, specifically, mainly after Dbus, Gvariant, GObject, and GTK.

Custom JSON Overrides and Attribute

• Created Vala syntax sugar specifically making a [JSON] attribute to do serialization.
• Built support for custom overrides as in mapping JSON keys to differently named fields/properties.
• Reduced boilerplate by generating C code behind the scenes.

Structs

• I’ve created both Vala functions to deserialize and serialize structs using JSON boxed functions.
• I created a Vala generate_struct_serialize_func function to create a C code function called _ % s_serialize_func to serialize fields.

• I then created a Vala function generate_struct_to_json to create a C code function called _json_ % s_serialize_mystruct to fully serialize the struct by using boxed serialize functions.
  

• I created a Vala generate_struct_deserialize_func function to create a C code function called _ % s_deserialize_func to deserialize fields.
• I then created a Vala function generate_struct_to_json to create a C code function called _json_ % s_deserialize_mystruct to fully deserialize the struct by using boxed deserialized functions.

GObjects

• I’ve created both Vala functions to deserialize and serialize GObjects using json_gobject_serialize and JSON generator.

• I then created a Vala function generate_gclass_to_json to create a C code function called _json_ % s_serialize_gobject_myclass to fully serialize GObjects.
  

• I created a Vala generate_gclass_from_json function to create a C code function called _json_ % s_deserialize_class to deserialize fields.

Non-GObjects

• I’ve done serializing of non-GObjects using JSON GLib’s builder functions.
• I then created a Vala function generate_class_to_json to create a C code function called _json_ % s_serialize_myclass to fully serialize non-objects that aren’t inheriting from Object or Json.Serializable.

Future Work:

Research

• Research still needs to be put into integrating XML and determining which library to use.
• The integration of YAML and other formatting languages not only JSON, YAML, or XML.

Custom Overrides and Attributes

• I want to create more specialized attributes for JSON that only do serialization or deserialization. Such as [JsonDeserialize] and [JsonSerialize] or something similar.
• [JSON] attribute needs to do both deserializing and serializing, and at the moment, the deserializing code has problems.
• XML, YAML, and other formating languages will follow very similar attribute patterns: [Yaml] , [ Xml ], [ Json ] .

Bugs

• unref c code functions are calling nulls, which shouldn’t be the cause. They need proper types going through.
• Deserializing prompts a redefinition that needs to be corrected.
• Overridden GObject properties need to have setters made to be able to get the values.

Links

• Here is the JSON module that has majority of the code.
• Here is the merge request .

It’s been another busy week for the GNOME Foundation. Here’s my attempt to summarise what’s been happening. As with my previous update, this update is for the whole organisation rather than just me personally. It’s also likely that I’ll have missed some things. Hopefully I’ve captured the highlights though!

GNOME.Asia 2025

GNOME.Asia 2025 is happening in Toyko, Japan, in December. I’m sure that this is going to be a fantastic event, and the call for papers has recently been extended to 1st October. If you have an idea for a talk and would like to participate, go submit a proposal!

Digital wellbeing

The Foundation has been funding development work on digital wellbeing features in GNOME for almost two years now. This work is funded by a grant that we received from Endless, which is now in its final stages. I spent some of this week reviewing the budget and discussing the timeline with Philip and Ignacy, who are currently working on the project.

There are a number of features which are currently in development which will hopefully be landed for GNOME 50, including session time limits for accounts that are managed with parental controls. We also have a modernized parental controls app which is also in the works.

For Future Summit

Kristi attended the For Future Summit in the United Arab Emirates last weekend, where she gave a talk about GNOME and had some exciting hallway conversations. There were some very interesting organisations at the event, who we are hoping to have follow-up conversations with soon.

Thank you to For Future Summit for funding Kristi’s attendance.

Flathub

We have a long-standing ambition to establish Flathub as an independent entity, so that it can do its own fundraising and spending. These plans have unfortunately suffered from delays. However, Rob has been working with Aleix from KDE on this recently, and they’ve made some positive progress this week, with lawyers being commissioned to provide some of the initial pieces that we need. I’m hopeful that this work can continue and we can finally get Flathub standing on its own feet.

Alongside this, Flathub infrastructure support continues to tick along. All of this Flathub support is being funded from our Endless grant, so many thanks to them for enabling it to happen.

Board regular meeting

The board had its first regular meeting of September this week (regular meetings are on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month). The Finance Committee have been working on the upcoming budget since the Board meeting, so this was a good opportunity for the Board to discuss the latest proposal.

This is the best budgeting process I’ve seen in my years on the board. Kudos to everyone who’s been involved.

GIMP support

The GIMP project’s grants program has been inching towards the finish line this week. It’s taken a while, but we’re almost there! It’ll be so exciting to see two developers being funded from their donation stream.

Routine paperwork

A fair chunk of the work done by the Foundation is not very exciting, but is important nonetheless. This week featured a few items of that type, relating to our trademarks and insurance. These got done.

Message ends

See you again next week. o/

• Up early, bid 'bye to M. sync & brainstorming with Dave, quick sync with Frank, prepared slides for TTT:
• Gave a Tea Time Training on threading:
  

Introduction

Python-BPF offers a new way to write eBPF programs entirely in Python, compiling them into real object files. This project is open-source and available on GitHub and PyPI . I wrote it alongside R41k0u .

Published Library with Future Plans

Python-BPF is a published Python library with plans for further development towards production-ready use.
You can pip install pythonbpf but it’s certainly not at all production ready and the code is hacky at best with more bugs than I could count. (This was a hackathon project afterall. We plan to fix it after we are done with the hackathon.)

The Old Way: Before Python-BPF

Before Python-BPF, writing eBPF programs in Python typically involved embedding C code within multiline strings, often using libraries like bcc . eBPF allows for small programs to run based on kernel events, similar to kernel modules.

Here’s an example of how it used to be:

from bcc import BPF
from bcc.utils import printb

# define BPF program
prog = """
int hello(void *ctx) {
 bpf_trace_printk("Hello, World!\\n");
 return 0;
}
"""

# load BPF program
b = BPF(text=prog)
b.attach_kprobe(event=b.get_syscall_fnname("clone"), fn_name="hello")

# header
print("%-18s %-16s %-6s %s" % ("TIME(s)", "COMM", "PID", "MESSAGE"))

# format output
while 1:
 try:
 (task, pid, cpu, flags, ts, msg) = b.trace_fields()
 except ValueError:
 continue
 except KeyboardInterrupt:
 exit()
 printb(b"%-18.9f %-16s %-6d %s" % (ts, task, pid, msg))

This approach, while functional, meant writing C code within Python, lacking support from modern Python development tools like linters.

Features of the Multiline C Program Approach

# load BPF program
b = BPF(text="""
#include <uapi/linux/ptrace.h>

BPF_HASH(last);

int do_trace(struct pt_regs *ctx) {
 u64 ts, *tsp, delta, key = 0;

 // attempt to read stored timestamp
 tsp = last.lookup(&key);
 if (tsp != NULL) {
 delta = bpf_ktime_get_ns() - *tsp;
 if (delta < 1000000000) {
 // output if time is less than 1 second
 bpf_trace_printk("%d\\n", delta / 1000000);
 }
 last.delete(&key);
 }

 // update stored timestamp
 ts = bpf_ktime_get_ns();
 last.update(&key, &ts);
 return 0;
}
""")

The multiline C program approach allowed for features like BPF MAPS (hashmap type), map lookup, update, and delete, BPF helper functions (e.g., bpf_ktime_get_ns , bpf_printk ), control flow, assignment, binary operations, sections, and tracepoints.

Similar Program in Reduced C

For production environments, eBPF programs are typically written in pure C, compiled by clang into a bpf target object file, and loaded into the kernel with tools like libbpf . This approach features map sections, license global variables, and section macros specifying tracepoints.

#include <linux/bpf.h>
#include <bpf/bpf_helpers.h>
#define u64 unsigned long long
#define u32 unsigned int

struct {
 __uint(type, BPF_MAP_TYPE_HASH);
 __uint(max_entries, 1);
 __type(key, u32);
 __type(value, u64);
} last SEC(".maps");

SEC("tracepoint/syscalls/sys_enter_execve")
int hello(struct pt_regs *ctx) {
 bpf_printk("Hello, World!\\n");
 return 0;
}

char LICENSE[] SEC("license") = "GPL";

Finally! Python-BPF

Python-BPF brings the true eBPF experience to Python by allowing the exact same functionality to be replaced by valid Python code. This is a significant improvement over multiline C strings, offering support from existing Python tools.

from pythonbpf import bpf, map, section, bpfglobal, compile
from ctypes import c_void_p, c_int64, c_int32, c_uint64
from pythonbpf.helpers import ktime
from pythonbpf.maps import HashMap

@bpf
@map
def last() -> HashMap:
 return HashMap(key_type=c_uint64, value_type=c_uint64, max_entries=1)

@bpf
@section("tracepoint/syscalls/sys_enter_execve")
def hello(ctx: c_void_p) -> c_int32:
 print("entered")
 return c_int32(0)

@bpf
@section("tracepoint/syscalls/sys_exit_execve")
def hello_again(ctx: c_void_p) -> c_int64:
 print("exited")
 key = 0
 last().update(key)
 ts = ktime()
 return c_int64(0)

@bpf
@bpfglobal
def LICENSE() -> str:
 return "GPL"

compile()

Python-BPF uses ctypes to preserve compatibility, employs decorators to separate the BPF program from other Python code, allows intuitive creation of global variables, and defines sections and tracepoints similar to its C counterpart. It also provides an interface to compile and run in the same file.

How it Works Under the Hood

1. Step 1: Generate AST The Python ast module is used to generate the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST).

2. Step 2: Emit LLVM IR llvmlite from Numba emits LLVM Intermediate Representation (IR) and debug information for specific parts like BPF MAPs. The .py file is converted into LLVM Intermediate Representation.

3. Step 3: Compile LLVM IR The .ll file, containing all code written under the @bpf decorator, is compiled using llc -march=bpf -O2 .

4. Step 4: Generate eBPF Object File The LLVM backend takes the IR and converts it into a bpf object file with eBPF bytecode, handling all optimizations.

   

Salient Features

Previous Python options for eBPF relied on bcc for compilation, which is not ideal for production use. The only two real options for production-quality eBPF programs were aya in Rust and Clang with kernel headers in C. Python-BPF introduces a third, new option, expanding the horizons for eBPF development.

It currently supports:

• Control flow
• Hash maps (with plans to add support for other map types)
• Binary operations
• Helper functions for map manipulation
• Kernel trace printing functions
• Timestamp helpers
• Global variables (implemented as maps internally with syntactical differences)

TL;DR

• Python-BPF allows writing eBPF programs directly in Python.
• This library compiles Python eBPF code into actual object files.
• Previously, eBPF programs in Python were written as C code strings.
• Python-BPF simplifies eBPF development with Python decorators.
• It offers a new option for production quality BPF programs in Python.
• The tool supports BPF maps, helper functions, and control flow, with plans to extend to completeness later.

Thanks for reading my poorly written blog :)

Those of you who follow the Toolbx project might have noticed something odd about our latest release that came out a month ago. The version number looked shorter than usual even though it only had relatively conservative and urgent bug-fixes, and no new enhancements.

If you were wondering about this, then, yes, you are right. Toolbx will continue to use these shorter version numbers from now on.

The following is a brief history of how the Toolbx version numbers evolved over time since the beginning of the project till this present moment.

Toolbx started out with a MAJOR.MINOR.MICRO versioning scheme. eg., 0.0.1, 0.0.2, etc.. Back then, the project was known as fedora-toolbox, was implemented in POSIX shell, and this versioning scheme was meant to indicate the nascent nature of the project and the ideas behind it.

To put it mildly, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was so unsure that for several weeks or few months before the first Git commit in August 2018, it was literally a single file that implemented the fedora-toolbox(1) executable and a Dockerfile for the fedora-toolbox image on my laptop that I would email around to those who were interested.

A nano version was reserved for releases to address brown paper bag bugs or other critical issues, and for release candidates. eg., several releases between 0.0.98 and 0.1.0 used it to act as an extended set of release candidates for the dot-zero 0.1.0 release. More on that later.

After two years, in version 0.0.90 , Toolbx switched from the POSIX shell implementation to a Go implementation authored by Ondřej Míchal . The idea was to do a few more 0.0.9x releases to shake out as many bugs in the new code as possible, implement some of the bigger items on our list that had gotten ignored due to the Go rewrite, and follow it up with a dot-zero 0.1.0 release. That was in May 2020.

Things went according to plan until the beginning of 2021, when a combination of factors put a spanner in the works, and it became difficult to freeze development and roll out the dot-zero release. It was partly because we kept getting an endless stream of bugs and feature requests that had to be addressed; partly because real life and shifting priorities got in the way for the primary maintainers of the project; and partly because I was too tied to the sanctity of the first dot-zero release. This is how we ended up doing the extended set of release candidates with a nano version that I mentioned above.

Eventually, version 0.1.0 arrived in October 2024, and since then we have had three more releases — 0.1.1, 0.1.2 and 0.2. Today, the Toolbx project is seven years old, and some things have changed enough that it requires an update to the versioning scheme.

First, both Toolbx and the ideas that it implements are a lot more mature and widely adopted than they were at the beginning. So much so, that there are a few independent reimplementations of it. It’s time for the project to stop hiding behind a micro version.

Second, the practice of bundling and statically linking the Go dependencies sometimes makes it necessary to update the dependencies to address security bugs or other critical issues. It’s more convenient to do this as part of an upstream release than through downstream patches by distributors. So far, we have managed to avoid the need to do minimal releases targeting only specific issues for conservative downstream distributors, but the recent NVIDIAScape or CVE-2025-23266 and CVE-2025-23267 in the NVIDIA Container Toolkit gave me pause. We managed to escape this time too, but it’s clear that we need a plan to deal with these scenarios.

Hence, from now on, Toolbx releases will default to not having a micro version and use a MAJOR.MINOR versioning scheme. A micro version will be reserved for the same purposes that a nano version was reserved for until now — to address critical issues and for release candidates.

It’s easier to read and remember a shorter MAJOR.MINOR version than a longer one, and appropriately conveys the maturity of the project. When a micro version is needed, it will also be easier to read and remember than a longer one with a nano version. Being easy to read and remember is important for version numbers, because it separates them from Git commit hashes.

So, this is why the latest release is 0.2, not 0.1.3.

GNOME Kiosk is a separate Wayland compositor built on the same core components as GNOME Shell, such as Mutter.

While it does not provide a desktop UI, it is intended for kiosk and appliance use cases.

Originally designed to run a single application in fullscreen mode, recent development has expanded its scope toward more versatile window management and system integration.

Recent Releases Overview

47

• Support for Shell introspection API (in --unsafe-mode ).

48

• Initial support for configurable windows via window-config.ini .
• Added Shell Screenshot D-Bus API.

49

• Extended window configuration: set-on-monitor , set-window-type , window tags.
• Added support for remote sessions (Systemd).
• Fixes for GrabAccelerators, media keys, and compositor shortcut inhibition.

Window Configuration and Tagged Clients

One of the recent main areas of development has been window configuration .

• In GNOME 48, Kiosk gained initial support for configuring windows via a static configuration file ( window-config.ini ).
• In GNOME 49, this functionality was extended with additional options:
  • set-on-monitor : place windows on a specific monitor.
  • set-window-type : assign specific roles to windows (e.g. desktop , dock , splash ).
  • Matching based on Window tags : allow selection of windows based on toplevel tags, a new feature in Wayland protocols 1.43 .

Additionally, with the new ( in mutter from GNOME 49 ) gnome-service-client utility, toplevel windows tags can be assigned to clients at launch, making it possible to configure their behavior in Kiosk without modification to the client.

Example: configuring a tagged client in Kiosk

GNOME Kiosk searches for the window configuration file window-config.ini in the following locations:

• The base directory for user-specific application configuration usually $HOME/.config/gnome-kiosk/window-config.ini
• The system-wide list of directories for application data $XDG_DATA_DIRS This list usually includes:
  • /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/gnome-kiosk/window-config.ini
  • /usr/local/share/gnome-kiosk/window-config.ini
  • /usr/share/gnome-kiosk/window-config.ini

Therefore, for a user configuration, edit $HOME/.config/gnome-kiosk/window-config.ini to read:

[all]
set-fullscreen=false
set-above=false

[desktop]
match-tag=desktop
set-window-type=desktop
set-fullscreen=true

With this configuration, GNOME Kiosk will treat any surface with the toplevel tag desktop as a „desktop“ type of window.

launching a tagged client

gnome-service-client -t desktop weston-simple-shm

This command starts the weston-simple-shm client and associates the tag desktop with its surface.

The end result is the weston-simple-shm window running as a background window placed at the bottom of the windows stack.

This combination makes it possible to build structured kiosk environments with different Wayland client used docks or desktop windows for implementing root menus.

Accessibility and Input

Several improvements have been made to input handling and accessibility:

• Fixes for GrabAccelerators support.
• Support for media keys in Systemd sessions.
• Ability to inhibit compositor shortcuts.
• Compatibility with screen reader usage.

Remote Sessions

As of GNOME 49, Kiosk supports remote sessions when run under Systemd. This allows kiosk sessions to be used not only on local displays but also in remote session contexts.

D-Bus APIs

Although GNOME Kiosk is a separate compositor, it implements selected D-Bus APIs also available in GNOME Shell for compatibility purposes. These include:

• Screenshot API (added in 48).
• Shell introspection when started with --unsafe-mode (added in 47).

This makes it possible to use existing GNOME testing and automation frameworks such as Ponytail and Dogtail with kiosk sessions.

These APIs allow automation scripts to inspect and interact with the user interface, enabling the creation of automated tests and demonstrations for kiosk application (using tools like GNOME ponytail and dogtail ).

GNOME Kiosk is the Wayland compositor used with the Wayland enabled version of Anaconda, the installer for Fedora (and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well). The support for introspection and screenshots is used by anabot , the framework for automated testing of the installer.

Development Direction

Future development of GNOME Kiosk is expected to continue along the following lines:

• Configuration refinement : further improving flexibility of the window configuration system.
• Accessibility : ensuring kiosk sessions benefit from GNOME’s accessibility technologies.

The goal remains to provide a focused, reliable compositor for kiosk and appliance deployments, without implementing the full desktop UI features of GNOME Shell.

As time is approaching the release of GNOME 49, I thought I should probably put together a small recap post covering some of the new things in Maps.

Metro Station Symbols

The map style now supports showing localized symbols for rail- and metro stations (relying on places being tagged with reference to the networks' entry in Wikidata.

Highway Symbols in Place Details

The existing code for showing custom highways shields in the map view (based on code from the OpenStreetMap Americana project) has been extended to expose the necessary bits to use it more generally as icon surfaces in a GtkImage widget. So now custom shields are shown in place details when clicking on a road label.

Adwaita Shortcuts Dialog

The keyboard shortcuts help dialog was ported by Maximiliano to use AdwShortcutsDialog, improving adaptivity.

Showing OSM Account Avatars in OSM Account Dialog

If a user has set up OAuth for an OpenStreetMap account, and has set a personal profile picture in their OSM account this is now shown in place of the generic „face“ icon.

And speaking of editing points-of-interests, the edit dialog has been compacted a bit to better accomodate smaller screen sizes.

Softer Labels

Some smaller adjustments has also been made to the map style, such as using slightly softer color for the place labels for towns and cities rather than pitch black (or bright white for dark mode).

Marker Alignments

Thanks to work done by Corentin Noël for libshumate 1.5, the center point for map markers can now be adjusted.

This means the place markers in Maps can now actually point to the actually coordinate (e.g. having the “tip of the needle” at the actual location).

Updating the Highway Shields Defintions

And finally of the last changes before the release was updating the definition for custom highway shields from OpenStreetMap Americana. So now, among others we support shields for national and regional highways in Argentina.

And that's some of the highlights from the 49 release cycle!

Last year the Webkit project started to integrate its tracing routines with Sysprof . Since then, the feedback I’ve received about it is that it was a pretty big improvement in the development of the engine! Yay.

People started using Sysprof to have insights about the internal states of Webkit, gather data on how long different operations took, and more. Eventually we started hitting some limitations in Sysprof, mostly in the UI itself, such as lack of correlational and visualization features.

Earlier this year a rather interesting enhancement in Sysprof was added: it is now possible to filter the callgraph based on marks . What it means in practice is, it’s now possible to get statistically relevant data about what’s being executed during specific operations of the app.

In parallel to WebKit, recently Mesa merged a patch that integrates Mesa’s tracing routines with Sysprof . This brought data from yet another layer of the stack, and it truly enriches the profiling we can do on apps. We now have marks from the DRM vblank event, the compositor, GTK rendering, WebKit, Mesa, back to GTK, back to the compositor, and finally the composited frame submitted to the kernel. A truly full stack view of everything.

So, what’s the catch here? Well, if you’re an attentive reader, you may have noticed that the marks counter went from this last year:

To this, in March 2025:

And now, we’re at this number:

I do not just when I say that this is a significant number! I mean, just look at this screenshot of a full view of marks:

Naturally, this is Sysprof to its limits! The app is starting to struggle to handle such massive amounts of data. Having so much data also starts introducing noise in the marks – sometimes, for example, you don’t care about the Mesa marks, or the WebKit marks, of the GLib marks.

Hiding Marks

The most straightforward and impactful improvement that could be done, in light of what was explained above, was adding a way to hide certain marks and groups.

Sysprof heavily uses GListModels, as is trendy in GTK4 apps, so marks, catalogs, and groups are all considered lists containing lists containing items. So it felt natural to wrap these items in a new object with a visible property, and filter by this property, pretty straightforward.

Except it was not

Turns out, the filtering infrastructure in GTK4 did not support monitoring items for property changes. After talking to GTK developers, I learned that this was just a missing feature that nobody got to implementing. Sounded like a great opportunity to enhance the toolkit!

It took some wrestling, but it worked , the reviews were fantastic and now GtkFilterListModel has a new watch-items property . It only works when the the filter supports monitoring, so unfortunately GtkCustomFilter doesn’t work here. The implementation is not exactly perfect, so further enhancements are always appreciated.

So behold! Sysprof can now filter marks out of the waterfall view:

Counters

Another area where we have lots of potential is counters. Sysprof supports tracking variables over time. This is super useful when you want to monitor, for example, CPU usage, I/O, network, and more.

Naturally, WebKit has quite a number of internal counters that would be lovely to have in Sysprof to do proper integrated analysis. So between last year and this year, that’s what I’ve worked on as well! Have a look:

Unfortunately it took a long time to land some of these contributions, because Sysprof seemed to be behaving erratically with counters. After months fighting with it, I eventually figured out what was going on with the counters, and wrote the patch with probably my biggest commit message this year (beat only by few others, including a literal poem .)

Wkrictl

WebKit also has a remote inspector, which has stats on JavaScript objects and whatnot. It needs to be enabled at build time, but it’s super useful when testing on embedded devices.

I’ve started working on a way to extract this data from the remote inspector, and stuff this data into Sysprof as marks and counters. It’s called wkrict . Have a look:

This is far from finished, but I hope to be able to integrate this when it’s more concrete and well developed.

Future Improvements

Over the course of an year, the WebKit went from nothing to deep integration with Sysprof, and more recently this evolved into actual tooling built around this integrations. This is awesome, and has helped my colleagues and other contributors to help the project in ways it simply wasn’t possible before.

There’s still *a lot* of work to do though, and it’s often the kind of work that will benefit everyone using Sysprof, not only WebKit. Here are a few examples:

• Integrate JITDump symbol resolution , which allows profiling the JavaScript running on webpages. There’s ongoing work on this, but needs to be finished.
• Per-PID marks and counters. Turns out, WebKit uses a multi-process architecture, so it would be better to redesign the marks and counters views to organize things by PID first, then groups, then catalogs.
• A new timeline view. This is strictly speaking a condensed waterfall view, but it makes it more obvious the relationship between “inner” and “outer” marks.
• Performance tuning in Sysprof and GTK. We’re dealing with orders of magnitude more data than we used to, and the app is starting to struggle to keep up with it.

Some of these tasks involve new user interfaces, so it would be absolutely lovely if Sysprof could get some design love from the design team. If anyone from the design team is reading this, we’d love to have your help

Finally, after all this Sysprof work, Christian kindly offered me to help co-maintain the project, which I accepted. I don’t know how much time and energy I’ll be able to dedicate, but I’ll try and help however I can!

I’d like to thank Christian Hergert, Benjamin Otte, and Matthias Clasen for all the code reviews, for all the discussions and patience during the influx of patches.

Some of the stuff I did in August.

AbiWord

More memory leaks fixing.

gudev-rs

Updated gudev-rs to the latest glib-rs, as a requirement to port any code using it to the latest glib-rs.

libopenraw

A minor fix so that it can be used to thumbnail JPEG file extracting the preview.

Released alpha.12.

Converted the x-trans interpolation to use floats. Also removed a few unnecessary unsafe blocks.

Niepce

A lot of work on the importer. Finally finished that UI bit I had in progress of a while and all the downfall with it. It is in the develop branch which mean it will be merged to main . The includes some UI layout changes to the dialog.

Then I fixed the camera importer that was assuming everyone followed the DCIM specification (narrator: no they didn't). This mean it was broken on iPhone 14 and the Fujifilm X-T3 that has two card slot (really, use a card reader if the camera uses memory cards). Also sped it up, it's still really slow.

Also better handle the asynchronous tasks running on a thread like the thumbnailing or camera import list content. I'm almost ready to move on.

Tore up code using gdkpixbuf for many reasons. It's incompatible with multiple threads, gdk texture were already created from raw buffers. This simplify a lot of things.