Quassel* tray icon not working with indicator-application

[Rob Tongue]

I have noticed that in *ubuntu 12.04/12.10/13.04/13.10", quassel client or regular quassel does not have a working tray icon, unless the desktop environment is KDE. I got the tray icon to work by removing the indicator-application package, but of course in Unity, that would not be ideal. In Xubuntu, it doesn't seem to break anything.

Also, in Unity, there is no indicator-messages entry for quassel like there is in 12.04, but I have a feeling that has to do with indicator-messages being coded in gtk3 on newer versions.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: quassel-client-qt4 0.9.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-19.29-generic 3.8.8
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-19-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.330
Date: Sun Jul 28 19:15:14 2013
LiveMediaBuild: Xubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130423.1)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: quassel
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Changes in indicators and Unity have made continued support for them problematic. Starting with 13.04 Kubuntu dropped it's use of a message indicator. If someone wants to work on fixing these kinds of problems, patches are welcome as it's unsupported upstream and the Kubuntu team doesn't have the resources to support it.

[Rob Tongue (robtongue)]

Scott, you do realize I didn't post the bug against Kubuntu, right? The issue is not with KDE, it is with Xubuntu and regular Ubuntu. I wasn't saying that the issue was indicator-messages, I said it is indicatior-application. Once I remove that, the TRAY ICON works. Please explain to me why this is a "won't fix"?

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Because it needs some kind of porting to the Unity specific protocol they're now using for indicators. Upstream doesn't support it and no one in the Kubuntu team will either. It's unfortunate, but since Unity is doing it's own thing, support from anyone else is unlikely.

I marked it wontfix, meaning it's very unlikely to get fixed, not invalid. I'm not saying it's not a bug. The status for that is invalid.

Did you try installing the Qt variant of the package? It might work better.

[Rob Tongue (robtongue)]

I did. I am actually using quassel-client-qt4. It is stuff like this that is making me slowly move away from ubuntu variants. Unity is nice, but it breaks too many other things by trying to be too different. Thanks for the input.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

It's because Canonical moved the message-indicator stuff to a newer API and is
no longer maintaining the KDE message-indicator and the old one quit working
because of the API change.