Bug#477509: gnome-panel: "main menu" hangs X11 on first click

[The Anarcat]

Package: gnome-panel
Version: 2.20.3-3
Severity: important

Hi,

One of the first things I do when I setup my Debian/gnome system is to
replace the "Menu bar" ("Applications/Places/System"...) applet by the
"Main menu" applet (the smallest one with just the gnome foot logo).

In that setup, clicking on the foot takes out the whole GUI (Xorg, I
guess): I can't type in any window or click on anything and the clock
applet freezes. This lasts around 15 seconds.

I think there's some optimisation in the default "Menu bar" applet that
is not present in the smaller "Main menu" applet and that should be
retrofitted in the latter, otherwise it's really a pain to use.

Once I clicked on the button in a session, the hang doesn't happen again
until I logout and log back in, even if I kill the gnome-panel process
(and it gets restarted automatically by the gnome session manager).

I tried looking through the debian BTS but I haven't found anything like
this bug.

The bugzilla trackers do have a *similar* bug but it's not quite the
same:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445946

The bug above is more a feature request than a bug. The problem I'm
signaling here is that not only gnome-panel takes a while to load, but
that the whole X11 session freezes totally. So it's not just a matter of
having to wait a few seconds while the menu loads but that I can't do
anything else while this lasts.

I think the problem here is that the application doesn't manage well
that first mouse click event. It should give control back to X11 and
just finish processing the event while it builds its menu...

Note that I'm filing this under gnome-panel instead of gnome-applets
because that's how the similar bug is filed upstream.

A.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (1, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=fr_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gnome-panel depends on:
ii  gnome-about                2.22.0-1      The GNOME about box
ii  gnome-control-center       1:2.22.0-2    utilities to configure the GNOME d
ii  gnome-desktop-data         2.22.0-1      Common files for GNOME 2 desktop a
ii  gnome-menus                2.22.0-1      an implementation of the freedeskt
ii  gnome-panel-data           2.20.3-3      common files for the GNOME Panel
ii  libatk1.0-0                1.20.0-1      The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libbonobo2-0               2.22.0-1      Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0             2.22.0-1      The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                      2.7-10        GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2                  1.4.14-1      The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2           0.74-1        simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libecal1.2-7               1.12.3-1      Client library for evolution calen
ii  libedataserver1.2-9        1.12.3-1      Utility library for evolution data
ii  libedataserverui1.2-8      1.12.3-1      GUI utility library for evolution 
ii  libgconf2-4                2.22.0-1      GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0                1:2.6.2-1     library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0               2.16.1-2      The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-desktop-2         2.22.0-1      Utility library for loading .deskt
ii  libgnome-menu2             2.22.0-1      an implementation of the freedeskt
ii  libgnome2-0                2.20.1.1-1    The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomeui-0               2.20.1.1-1    The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0             1:2.22.0-2    GNOME Virtual File System (runtime
ii  libgtk2.0-0                2.12.9-2      The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  liborbit2                  1:2.14.12-0.1 libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii  libpanel-applet2-0         2.20.3-3      library for GNOME Panel applets
ii  libpango1.0-0              1.20.2-2      Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libwnck22                  2.22.0-1      Window Navigator Construction Kit 
ii  libx11-6                   2:1.0.3-7     X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6                    1:1.0.3-2     X11 authorisation library
ii  menu-xdg                   0.3           freedesktop.org menu compliant win

Versions of packages gnome-panel recommends:
ii  alacarte                      0.11.3-1   easy GNOME menu editing tool
ii  evolution-data-server         1.12.3-1   evolution database backend server
ii  gnome-applets                 2.20.1-3   Various applets for GNOME 2 panel 
ii  gnome-icon-theme              2.22.0-1   GNOME Desktop icon theme
ii  gnome-session                 2.22.0-2   The GNOME 2 Session Manager

-- no debconf information