flashback doesn't respect keyboard layout order, causing games to not accept keyboard input

[Ori Avtalion]

When setting multiple Input Sources in GNOME's Region & Language settings, the top entry should be the default one.

If I have "English (US)" as a first item, and "Hebrew" second, I would expect English to be the default.

However, gnome-flashback didn't respect that order, and, in the above example, Hebrew is set to the default.

This was fixed upstream, but was not released yet.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-flashback/commit/6ac373a990aa6280f85e6c891cf58a53cc9bc93b

It should nonetheless be fixed in Ubuntu 18.04 and 18.10.

[Impact]

 * This mostly affects games. In Wine, when it tries to figure out the keyboard layout, it encounters an unexpected Hebrew layout, fails to identify it, and matches it with a US English keyboard. This means that only some keys work (if at all). I know of one Java based game that runs natively on Linux and is also affected.

 * I have been dealing with this bug for a while, and always thought the problem was in the games that failed to work correctly. This probably affects other users, even though gnome-flashback isn't used by many.

[Test Case]

All of the games I encountered that are affected are commercial, so I won't mention them here.
However, the issue and fix can be verified by following these steps:

* Start a Gnome Flashback user session.
* Go to System Settings > Region & Language.
* In "Input Sources" add "Hebrew": press "+", press the "..." at the bottom of the list, type "Hebrew" to filter the list, and then choose "Other" and "Hebrew". Click "Add.
* Make sure Hebrew is second on the list.

In the command line, type "setxkbmap -query".

Before the fix, the "layout" section will be "il,us,us". (Or perhaps "il,us")

After the fix, the layout section will be "us,il,us" (or perhaps "us,il").

[Regression Potential]

 * I do not see any regression issues. I am using the fix on my system and all affected games are working fine, including regular desktop use.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-flashback - 3.28.0-1ubuntu2

---------------
gnome-flashback (3.28.0-1ubuntu2) cosmic; urgency=medium

  * Backport upstream patch to make GNOME Flashback respect keyboard
    layout order from settings (assign-groups-in-order.diff; LP: #1790170).

 -- Dmitry Shachnev <email address hidden> Fri, 31 Aug 2018 19:08:30 +0300

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Hello Ori, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-flashback into bionic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-flashback/3.28.0-1ubuntu1.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-bionic to verification-done-bionic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-bionic. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Ori Avtalion (salty-horse)]

The package gnome-flashback 3.28.0-1ubuntu1.1 fixes the bug. Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-flashback - 3.28.0-1ubuntu1.1

---------------
gnome-flashback (3.28.0-1ubuntu1.1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * Backport upstream patch to make GNOME Flashback respect keyboard
    layout order from settings (assign-groups-in-order.diff; LP: #1790170).

 -- Dmitry Shachnev <email address hidden> Fri, 31 Aug 2018 19:08:30 +0300

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

The verification of the Stable Release Update for gnome-flashback has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.