TigerVNC Java viewer

Havin_it · Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 2:18 pm Post subject: TigerVNC Java viewer

Hi All,

This is sort of a prelude to filing an enhancement/bug about this, in case there's something I don't know about the situation.

I switched from TightVNC to TigerVNC, but have still been using the TightVNC Java viewer as an applet for web-based access because Tiger didn't appear to include one. However, recently I came across some mention that it did (in Red Hat at least), and looking in the Gentoo tarball, sure enough the Java code is there. I built it on its own and ran it via Apache on the vnc server box, and it seems to work fine.

So what I'm wondering is, mainly, why doesn't the tigervnc ebuild have a flag to build this? It could pretty much be copy-pasted from the TightVNC ebuild I should think, so I wonder why this wasn't done.

Is the code unloved/deprecated in tigervnc? I did notice the Makefile for it had "-target 1.5" which I had to change to 1.7 to build it, and there were a couple of deprecated method warnings when building. If it's really so vestigial, then I'd assume there is not much value in using it over the original tightvnc applet. I would if there was, if it offered any better compatibility with the tigervnc server, but there's nothing to indicate this.

Does anyone know what's going on with this? There's not a word about it on the tigervnc site, which isn't a good sign. Just wondering if it's worth looking into.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Gusar · Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:17 pm Post subject:

The TigerVNC Java viewer is in very active development actually (upstream has new commits for it today, that's how active), and I'm very sure it performs quite a bit better than the tightvnc viewer.

The reason it's not in the ebuild... Well, the ebuild as a whole is not really well maintained. It's still using an old xorg111 patch that makes the libvnc.so module crash X. And tigervnc-1.2.0 has been out since almost a month now, while the ebuild is still at 1.1.0. Also, xorg-server-1.12 is in ~arch, the ebuild won't work with that, it needs an xorg112 patch. I know, I know, I should file bugs for all that stuff :oops:

Basically, nothing wrong with the TigerVNC Java viewer, it's the opposite, it's in very good shape.

Havin_it · Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 7:00 pm Post subject:

Gusar, thanks for the reply. I found the code repo and I see what you mean - exciting!

I filed a bug to request the version bump, and suggested they add USE=java at the same time. Just to get it in the system

Gusar · Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 12:39 pm Post subject:

I've learned how to use cmake in ebuilds, and have put together an ebuild for tigervnc-1.2.0. Grab the tarball with the ebuild plus all needed patches from the bug

Note, I'm forcing the use of tigervnc's internal fltk copy. That's because patches to fltk are needed for full functionality and I haven't yet bothered trying to patch the system fltk. Also, this is only compile tested, I have no idea if the Java viewer in particular actually works. The rest should work, it's compiled the same way I compile the Arch Linux package.

It'd be cool if you give it a try.

Havin_it · Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 10:16 am Post subject:

Great, thanks for the pointer - I'll give it a try (time for a packer -Syu for my Arch client as well then

) Maybe worth adding/linking your work to the bug above?

I may have to keep using the tightvnc applet for now though, as I have it built with SSH support for access over WAN. I see from the tiger dev list that they're working on this now though - excellent!

In the meantime I'll certainly give the tiger applet a go when safely behind m'firewall though.

Havin_it · Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 11:19 am Post subject:

First merge attempt unsuccessful

it appeared to puke when linking the fltk lib, but with cmake's pithy output I think that's all I can tell you. FWIW I'm building with USE="gnutls%* java%* nptl pam%* server -opengl -xorgmodule" and it might also be worth knowing I build xorg-server with USE="-xorg" (because I don't use any real X on the server, which is headless).

Let me know if you want any more info about this. I'll keep trying.

Gusar · Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 11:45 am Post subject:

Bah, I just uploaded the tarball to the bug, and now you're telling me it doesn't work? :/

It built fine here. I don't think it matters how the system xorg-server was built, the tigervnc build process does not use it. And fltk isn't used by the server anyway, only by the viewer.

There is a way to have cmake spit out more info during compiling, but I'll have to figure out how to do it from an ebuild. Edit: Ok, it's very simple - near the top of the ebuild where you see CMAKE_IN_SOURCE_BUILD=1, just add CMAKE_VERBOSE=1

Havin_it · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:41 pm Post subject:

Sorry to bear bad tidings :oops:

Here's the couple of lines before the failure:

Gusar · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 3:11 pm Post subject:

I can't see the error in the output you posted. What are your MAKEFLAGS? Switch them to -j1 instead, on one occasion this helped me to see the compile failure. Also, maybe post a longer snippet of the output, but not directly here, use pastebin.

About continuing in the bug or here, idk, does it really make a difference?

Havin_it · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 3:31 pm Post subject:

Update: Success

I scanned the log further up and found the problem, my system VM was set to sun-jdk-1.6. So actually it was the Java part that had failed (because it sets "-source 1.7 -target 1.7" for javac). I changed to oracle-jdk-1.7 and it worked fine. I guess the ebuild should check for this though, ideally.

I should also mention that I'm currently still on xorg-server-1.11 as 1.12 isn't building for me at the moment (bug here). I realise that in my case it probably doesn't matter, but might version mismatches like that be a problem for people with USE="xorgmodule"?

Gusar · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 4:00 pm Post subject:

Havin_it · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 6:55 pm Post subject:

Gusar · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 9:33 pm Post subject:

Havin_it · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:03 am Post subject:

Thanks for the further illumination of the matter. I'm certainly happy enough to let the xorg-server version be dictated by tigervnc on the server (since it' the only X server that gets used), though it might be more of an issue on client machines where it's actually worth having newer graphics drivers (usually).

Speaking of clients, I just applied your ebuild on my netbook and it worked fine, although I do see one possible regression (scrollbars including horizontal on a same-width fullscreen display, instead of cursor-led scrolling) which I'll file something upstream about in due course. That one will not be too good for my Arch laptop because there I use it fullscreen on its own in a DM-less session.

Gusar · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:08 am Post subject:

Havin_it · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 10:50 am Post subject:

Ditto, without the ability to pan I feel like I'm getting RSI already

The vnc display is set to 1024x786, and my netbook screen is 1024x600. So the horizontal bar is there to scroll exactly the width taken up by the vertical one

Gusar · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 11:23 am Post subject:

Havin_it · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:08 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the xrandr tip -- this was actually the reason I switched to tiger originally, though I never knew I could actually add a mode. That makes things a lot better.

As for the SF tracker, I decided to add my own request but the one you linked is also interesting. If it works out, think we'll see it in the Java viewer too?

Gusar · Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:01 pm Post subject:

Bumping this thread for something quite awesome: Panning was added to the fltk viewer!! - http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.network.vnc.tigervnc.scm/1359

However, I'm not sure I'll go into creating a live ebuild. I did a live PKGBUILD on Arch - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=25408.

Would be cool if they made a new release soon, the current svn is awesome, it's the only vnc implementation capable of fluently displaying fullscreen video. What would also be cool is if the fltk guys committed more of the tigervnc patches and made a release.