Bug#562233: update-manager-gnome: window widens beyond screen width after clicking an upgrade item

[Nathan Schulte]

Package: update-manager-gnome
Version: 0.200.5-2
Followup-For: Bug #562233

First off, I belive this bug is actually a specific instance of a more
general bug, another specific instance of which is the Bug #590800 of
the update-manager package.

I believe this bug only occurs when the "Description of update" box is
being displayed.  What is happening is the following: long lines in
either (most likely) 1) the "Description" tab, or 2) the "Changes" tab
of the "Description of update" box cause the whole window to be
stretched in a supposed attempt to keep the line from wrapping.  This
happens regardess of whether or not the tab with the long lines is
currently being displayed.

However, the window is not always stretched far enough to keep the lines
from wrapping, and switching from and to a package with long lines will
some times cause the window to grow even more.

There seems to be some sort of (incorrect, and invalid) heuristic to determine whether or not
there is enough room in the text area to place a word on the same line
or to cause that word to wrap to the next.  If it determines that a line
can (incorrectly) fit on the line without expanding the box (and
therefore the window containing it), the box and window are expanded to
compensate.  This can cause a sort of "recurring" effect, in which the
next word is also checked until it no longer finds a word.  I'm not
certain if this is performed for every "long line", or if it happens for
the "continuation" (wrapped) lines as well, but that is irrelevant.

This heuristic should not be taking place in the first place, and the
effect as a whole is the bug.

Further, one is never able to shrink the window horizontally (by any means; handles at the borders, and ALT + MOUSE3; if the window is maximized and the bug causes the window to widen, the restore button goes away) beyond the minimum width
of the longest line (continuation line or otherwise; i.e. lines
displayed in the text areas, not the actual "long lines" that are being
wrapped), regardless of whether or not the heuristic described above
takes place.  It's possible this is yet another bug, but it's also
possible that that behavior is entailed by the behavior caused by this
bug.

Finally, given the nature of the bug, it's possible that this is
actually a bug of some GNOME library that update-manager is using.

Whew!  That should be plenty of information for anyone familiar with the
packages source to provide a patch; that is assuming it is not in fact a
bug of a GNOME dependency.

--

Oh, it looks like there was a patch proposed above.

Also, I am able to minimize the window, so that complication noted by
the reporter of Bug #590800 seems to have been fixed.

--
Nate

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (700, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages update-manager-gnome depends on:
ii  gconf2               3.2.5-1+build1
ii  gksu                 2.0.2-6
ii  python               2.7.3-2
ii  python-dbus          1.1.1-1
ii  python-gconf         2.28.1+dfsg-1
ii  python-gobject       3.2.2-1
ii  python-gtk2          2.24.0-3
ii  python-support       1.0.15
ii  python-vte           1:0.28.2-5
ii  update-manager-core  0.200.5-2

update-manager-gnome recommends no packages.

Versions of packages update-manager-gnome suggests:
ii  software-properties-gtk  0.82.7.1debian1
ii  update-notifier          0.99.3debian10

-- no debconf information