Sometimes windows are missing in panels tasklist

[Daniel Gibson]

In xfce4-panel sometimes the tasklist aka "Window Buttons" isn't updated correctly, causing some windows to be missing from it and also visual "gaps".
The XFCE bugreport is https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/-/issues/188
This bug was fixed a month ago with this merge request: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/-/merge_requests/66

4.14.3 from Ubuntu 20.04 is definitely affected, but as XFCE only merged the patch a month ago newer xfce4-panel versions from newer Ubuntu releases are probably affected as well. I didn't test those though.

[Daniel Gibson (metalcaedes)]

This is a patch that's equivalent to the solution XFCE merged (only this comments the code in question out instead of deleting it).

As far as I can tell it fixes the bug, but I'm not 100% sure as the bug only happened every few days or so on my system. I'm currently testing this patch on my system and will write another comment here in case the bug happens again with the patched panel (-plugin).

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "patch based on fix from upstream" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

[Daniel Gibson (metalcaedes)]

The patch indeed seems to have fixed the issue.

But now I've updated to XUbuntu 22.04 with xfce4-panel 4.16.3-1 and the bug is back, which means that the also needs to be applied there.

[Daniel Gibson (metalcaedes)]

I've been testing the same patch (as the one I posted in April for xfce4-panel 4.14.3) with xfce4-panel 4.16.3-1 on XUbuntu 22.04 for over a month now, and it works there as well.

Please add the patch to your packages, so XFCE users on Ubuntu get a fully working taskbar again.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Kari Aliranta (kurkha)]

Definitely still a problem in unpatched 4.16.3-1 in Ubuntu 22.04. Fixed in upstream xfce4-panel 4.16.4 according to announcement (see https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce-announce/2022-April/001109.html, "Fixed some window buttons not appearing in the panel (#188, !66)"). I hit the bug daily.

Please release new Ubuntu version of the panel package with the patch in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-panel/+bug/1968942/comments/1 if pulling in the upstream version is out of question.

[Daniel Gibson (metalcaedes)]

Thanks for chiming in, maybe now that this embarrassing bug is officially "Confirmed", it will finally be fixed..

(I wonder how many people ran into this bug and instead of reporting it just switched to another desktop or even another Linux distro)