Bug#614166: /usr/bin/boincmgr: window-close button doesn't work and misleading advice from "exit boinc mgr"

[Miles Bader]

Package: boinc-manager
Version: 6.12.14+dfsg-1
Severity: normal
File: /usr/bin/boincmgr



The previous version of the boinc-manager (6.10.x) worked exactly as
one would expect:  hitting the window close button would exit the
boinc manager, but boinc tasks and scheduling would continue as normal
in the background.

However the most recent update to boinc-manager (6.12.x) has very odd
behavior: hitting window-close simply iconifies the window, but
otherwise leaves the boinc-manager running.  This is bad, not only
because it's confusing for the user, but because the boinc-manager has
some unpleasant side-effects while it's running, such as very frequent
network activity (I don't know what it's actually doing, but there's
network activity about once a second due to the boinc-manager, maybe
some sort of keep-alive...).

It's possible to _really_ exit the new versio of the boinc-manager by
selecting "Exit BOINC Manager" from the "File" menu.  however this
pops up a scary sounding dialogue box that implies boinc will
basically stop working if you exit.  As far as I can figure, this
isn't true -- in the past, boinc scheduling and task worked absolutely
fine without the boinc-manager running, and this appears to still be
true with the new version.  Thus this dialogue box is misleading;
however I suspect many users will be scared by what it says, and opt
not to exit the boinc-manager out of confusion.

To fix these problems, I'd suggest that the boinc-manager's behavior
should be restored to that of the previous version:

  1) Since the boinc-manager is not necessary for boinc operation, the
  window close button should exit the boinc-manager application, as
  the user expexts.

  2) The misleading dialogue box should be removed or at least
  reworded to reflect the way things actually work.

Thanks,

-Miles


-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.37-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages boinc-manager depends on:
ii  libc6                   2.11.2-11        Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libgcc1                 1:4.6-20110216-1 GCC support library
ii  libglib2.0-0            2.28.0-2         The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgtk2.0-0             2.20.1-2         The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libnotify1 [libnotify1- 0.5.0-2          sends desktop notifications to a n
ii  libsqlite3-0            3.7.4-2          SQLite 3 shared library
ii  libstdc++6              4.6-20110216-1   The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libwxbase2.8-0          2.8.10.1-3+b1    wxBase library (runtime) - non-GUI
ii  libwxgtk2.8-0           2.8.10.1-3+b1    wxWidgets Cross-platform C++ GUI t

Versions of packages boinc-manager recommends:
ii  boinc-client              6.12.14+dfsg-1 core client for the BOINC distribu
ii  ia32-libs                 20110117       ia32 shared libraries for use on a

Versions of packages boinc-manager suggests:
ii  libgl1-mesa-glx               7.10-4     A free implementation of the OpenG
ii  libxt6                        1:1.0.9-2  X11 toolkit intrinsics library

-- no debconf information