Error Message: The Window Switcher installation is broken, resources are missing. Contact your distribution about this.

[Mekk]

From time to time, after I Alt-Tab to switch the current window, I get mysterious notification about broken window switcher. In Polish it reads

    Instalacja przełącznika okien jest uszkodzona, brakuje zasobów.
    Powiadom o tym swoją dystrybucję.

(screenshot attached). Roughly translating back to English it means

    Installation of window switcher is broken, lack of resources.
    Let your distribution know.

(unfortunately I failed to find source of this message so don't know actual English text).

Once it happens, it usually reappears on every or almost every Alt-Tab (and those messages stack).

Apart from this message things seem to work more-or-less fine (windows are switched).

I report the bug for two reasons:

1. I have absolutely no clue what does the error mean, which resources may be missing (my computer does not seem to be lacking anything, there is a lot of spare memory, disk, low I/O etc), which program reports it, and what I am, or am not, expected to do. So, as the minimum, it would be great if somebody could patch this message so it actually gives a clue what happened.

2. Error message explicite asks me to let my distribution know (I suppose „distribution” in this context means Linux distribution, Ubuntu in my case)(.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I use 2-monitor setup (and IIRC I never saw this problem on single monitor) and nvidia binary drivers.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: kwin-x11 4:5.5.5-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-64.85-lowlatency 4.4.44
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-64-lowlatency x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Mon Mar 20 16:36:22 2017
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-02-18 (1491 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 12.04.1 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120817.3)
SourcePackage: kwin
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-08-04 (227 days ago)

[Mekk (marcin-kasperski)]

I did some more googling and finally guessed the right phrase.
Some reports of similar (the same?) problem (all unresolved):

   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=804638
   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1244468
   https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=125764
   http://forums.netrunner.com/showthread.php?tid=23590

So looks like the English text is:

   The Window Switcher installation is broken, resources are missing.
   Contact your distribution about this.

and I am not the only one who is clueless about the reason.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Bastian Voigt (post-bastian-voigt)]

Any plans on fixing this? Anything I can provide you for analysis?

[Bastian Voigt (post-bastian-voigt)]

I use KDE Plasma on Ubuntu Bionic and the problem still exists

[Bastian Voigt (post-bastian-voigt)]

For me, the problem does not occur when using the default task-switcher. It occurs only when I try to install additional task switcher styles in the system settings dialog

[Scarlett Gately Moore (scarlettmoore)]

This bug is very old, if it is still an issue please update the bug with information from a supported release.

[Mekk (marcin-kasperski)]

I haven't seen it for a long time, but in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=804638 last comment is from 2022.

Nevertheless, there is one thing surely worth doing whether the problem is reproducible, or not: as I checked, this error message is still present in the codebase:

```
$ apt-get source kwin
…
dpkg-source: info: rozpakowywanie kwin w kwin-5.24.7
dpkg-source: info: rozpakowywanie kwin_5.24.7.orig.tar.xz
dpkg-source: info: rozpakowywanie kwin_5.24.7-0ubuntu0.1.debian.tar.xz
…

$ cd kwin-5.24.7/

$ rg 'resources are missing'
…
src/tabbox/tabboxhandler.cpp
273: args << QStringLiteral("--passivepopup") << i18n("The Window Switcher installation is broken, resources are missing.\n"

```

This message is clearly very unclear, so whether it is likely happen, or not, it would make sense to patch it. At the very least, adding info:

- what kind of resource is missing
- which window switcher is failing

Naively looking at tabboxhandler.cpp I have feeling that the error is reported when some QML file is invalid, so probably mentioning the name of problematic file would also make sense.