ANN: Python GUI development using XULRunner

[Don Spaulding]

On Sep 17, 5:53 pm, Todd Whiteman <to... at activestate.com> wrote:
> supp... at mysfdomain.com wrote:
> > On Sep 17, 1:21 pm, Todd Whiteman <to... at activestate.com> wrote:
> >> Don Spaulding wrote:
> >>> On Sep 16, 8:29 pm, Todd Whiteman <to... at activestate.com> wrote:
> >>>> I've put together a tutorial that shows off how to build a GUI
> >>>> application using XULRunner (same architectural components as Firefox
> >>>> uses) that can be used in conjunction with the Python programming language.
> >>>> The tutorial covers how to build a Python/XULRunner GUI application:http://pyxpcomext.mozdev.org/no_wrap/tutorials/pyxulrunner/python_xul...
> >>> I get to the "Running" step and run into "Couldn't load XPCOM."
> >>> Does this work on x86_64?  Or have I made a rookie mistake?
> >> Hi Don,
>
> >> A good question. Mozilla only provide 32-bit XulRunner applications by
> >> default, you you'll need to install the necessary 32-bit compatability
> >> libraries on your Linux machine, i.e. for Ubuntu it's something like:
> >> sudo apt-get install ia32-libs ia32-libs-gtk
>
> >> Then you should be able to run the example. You can check the
> >> dependencies using something the following commands, there should be no
> >> missing dependencies:
> >> $ cd pyxpcom_gui_app/xulrunner
> >> $ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ldd ./xulrunner-bin
>
> >> It is possible to use a 64-bit version, but you'll need to compile this
> >> yourself (or find somewhere that provides these x86_64 versions). Note
> >> that the PythonExt project does not offer Python bindings for x86_64
> >> either (it's on my todo list), you can compile the PythonExt part
> >> yourself as well if you need a 64-bit version.
>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Todd
>
> > Interesting, I'm running Ubuntu Intrepid here, and have both ia32-libs
> > and ia32-libs-gtk installed.
>
> > ldd shows that I'm missing the following libs, even though the proper
> > packages are installed, and the files show up in /usr/lib.
>
> >    libxcb-render-util.so.0 => not found
> >    libxcb-render.so.0 => not found
>
> > There's also /usr/lib/libxcb-render.so.0.0.0 and the same for render-
> > util, so I wonder if that could be part of the problem?
>
> > Don
>
> Hi Don,
>
> I'm thinking there may be additional 32-bit packages necessary then (I'm
> not sure which package).
>
> Not sure about Ubuntu 8.10 (it's still alpha). I'm using a Ubuntu 8.04
> x86_64 machine and my dependencies list the following for the latest
> 32-bit build of XulRunner:
>
> $ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ldd ./xulrunner-bin | grep libxcb
>         libxcb-xlib.so.0 => /usr/lib32/libxcb-xlib.so.0 (0xf6493000)
>         libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libxcb.so.1 (0xf647b000)
>
> Cheers,
> Todd

No worries Todd, it is alpha.  It was a very recent bug in the 8.10
ia32-libs package, which is now fixed  :-D

Thanks for the excellent writeup, BTW!  I've been wondering what was
involved in doing this for a while, it just never made it up my
priority list to figure out.  Again, thanks!