For those of you using BloGTK 2.0 on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic, you’ve probably noticed a few problems with crashes. Like, a lot of crashes.

From what I’ve been able to tell, BloGTK will crash when more than two windows have been opened. Why, I’ve no idea. My guess is that there’s some garbage collection problems that are causing problems. Whether that’s due to something in BloGTK itself or the underlying Python libraries isn’t known yet. Given that BloGTK works just fine on Jaunty, my guess is that there’s a bug with one of the libraries.

A bug report has already been added to the Launchpad project. If anyone has a better idea of where the problem may be, please post the information either in the bug report or on this blog.

I apologize for the problem, and hopefully the bug will be fixed as Karmic heads towards formal release.

UPDATE: It appears that the crash is related to the WebKit bindings. Investigation into this bug is continuing.

UPDATE – Sept 24: Some more digging has revealed that the crash happens when one editor window is closed and then another is opened. There is a bug report filed with the pywebkitgtk package that seems to deal with a similar issue, if not the same one. I will continue to see if there’s anything I can do with the BloGTK codebase to prevent the crashes.

I apologize for the problems, and hopefully this issue will be resolved before Karmic is formally released next month.

UPDATE: Nov. 5: Still testing this crash on Karmic. I’m hoping to be able to either find a fix or a workaround shortly. Thank you for your patience.

Also, keep the bug reports coming—there are definitely outstanding issues that need to get fixed with the 2.0 codebase, and the more that get squashed, the better BloGTK 2.0 will be.

At long last, BloGTK 2.0 is here and ready for download. BloGTK 2.0 is a major step up from prior versions, and features a completely new codebase and tons of modern features.

Getting BloGTK 2.0

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

If you’re running Jaunty, using BloGTK 2.0 is a snap. You can install BloGTK 2.0 from my Personal Package Archive. Just follow the instructions under the “Read about installing” link to get going. Then, you may use Synaptic to install the new version.

BloGTK 2.0 will first uninstall previous versions of BloGTK before installing. Your individual configuration files will remain, however, and if you wish to downgrade, you’ll be able to. (Why you would want to is beyond me, though.) Unfortunately, your old configuration won’t transfer over, but BloGTK makes it much easier to get up and running than before.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic

Packages for Karmic are now available in the BloGTK PPA. Be sure to select Ubuntu 9.10 in the drop-down box before entering the repository information.

Other Linux Distributions

If you’re running something other than Ubuntu, then you’ll need to install from source. To do that, go here to get the archive. Download the tar.gz file to a temporary folder and unpack it.

In the Terminal, go to the folder where BloGTK has been unpacked, and type:

sudo make install

BloGTK will then be installed.

BloGTK 2.0 has been very heavily tested, but it is possible that there are bugs, and there will be updates to deal with them. If you notice a bug with BloGTK, please file a bug report so those bugs can be squashed.

But most importantly, have fun using BloGTK 2.0!

Development on BloGTK 2.0 is continuing, with a formal release getting closer and closer. Here’s what’s been done lately:

• The MetaWeblog API routines have been patched to allow for better compatibility with b2evolution.
• Coding on offline editing has been started.
• The beginnings of internationalization (i18n) support have been added. BloGTK 1.x was not build with internationalization in mind. BloGTK 2.0 will be much easier to translate into other languages.
• The file structure for the app has changed for packaging. It is now possible to install BloGTK into the system. Packages for Ubuntu can now be built from the source.

However, there are a few things that need to be done:

• There are several bugs with BloGTK in Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic”. For example, there are some visual bugs with the progress indicator in the settings dialog and the editor preview system tends to segfault.
• Offline post editing support needs to be finished. BloGTK 2.0 will not have the most robust offline editing features, but I hope to improve on them in subsequent releases.
• Adding full support for the old Blogger API as a fallback. (Although this may be left out—is there really a need for supporting this depricated API?)

The biggest task is ironing out the remaining bugs. BloGTK 1.x was somewhat flaky. BloGTK 2.0 should be much more stable. While it is inevitable that bugs will crop up, BloGTK 2.0 has been more heavily tested than its predecessor.

As always, the source code can be downloaded from Launchpad. Keep those bug reports coming, and with luck, there will be a release soon.

There’s a lot of news about the recent security problems with old versions of WordPress. If you’re not keeping up to date with WordPress upgrades (the latest of this date is 2.8.4), you are putting yourself at risk.

For those who say that upgrading is a pain, it can be. But if you’re using a bunch of plugins that break with WordPress upgrades, then you’re opening yourself up to attack. Now is the time to ask yourself, do I really need that plugin? Or if you do, is there a newer version that’s better written? The new versions of WordPress make upgrading much easier, which reduces the pain in the future. And no matter how annoying an upgrade may be, rebuilding a site that’s been hacked into oblivion is much, much, much, much harder.

So, take the time to give your WordPress installs some love. It will save you a lot of pain and heartbreak in the end.

A few bits and pieces from the BloGTK front.

A new Ubuntu package for the old BloGTK 1.1 codebase has been released. This packages fixes a major bug with Python 2.6 and is recommended for all. For details, see the official release message. Thanks to Ralph Taylor for the fix.

Development on BloGTK 2.0 has lulled a little bit this summer, but is now picking back up. The focus right now is on squashing bugs rather than adding new features. Once the system is ready, the code will be moved on to the packaging phase – turning all the code from a bunch of code in one directory to something that can be installed and packaged.

Again, keep on filing bug reports and/or playing around with the source code for BloGTK. Already, there’s been one helpful contributor that’s helped with b2evolution compatibility. The more bug reports or patches, the better BloGTK will be.