Python GObject Introspection oddness

I recently ported indicator-jenkins to Gtk3 using the python GObject Introspection Repository (gir) bindings. Ted Gould did most of the work, I just cleaned some bits up and made sure everything worked. One issue that puzzled me for a while is that the GObject library changed the way it's "notify" signal works between GObject 2 and GObject 3. I've not seen any documentation of this change, so I'll describe it here.

For this example, let's make a very simple class that has a single property:

import gobject

class MyClass(gobject.GObject):
    prop = gobject.property(type=int)

...and a very simple callback function that we want to call whenever the value of 'prop' changes:

def cb(sender, prop):
    print "property '%s' changed on %r." % (prop.name, sender)

Finally, with GObject 2 we can create an instance of 'MyClass' and connect to the 'notify' signal like this:

inst = MyClass()
inst.connect("notify", cb)
inst.prop = 42

When we run this simple program we get the following output:
property 'prop' changed on .
... which is what we expected. However, if we port this code to GObject 3, it should look like this:

from gi.repository import GObject

class MyClass(GObject.GObject):
    prop = GObject.property(type=int)


def cb(sender, prop):
    print "property '%s' changed on %r." % (prop.name, sender)


inst = MyClass()
inst.connect("notify", cb)
inst.prop = 42

However, running this gives an error:

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/_gobject/propertyhelper.py:171: Warning: g_value_get_object: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_OBJECT (value)' failed
  instance.set_property(self.name, value)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "gobject3.py", line 8, in cb
    print "property '%s' changed on %r." % (prop.name, sender)
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'name'

The 'prop' parameter in the callback is set to None.

There is a solution however - connecting the callback to a more specific notification signal works as expected:

from gi.repository import GObject

class MyClass(GObject.GObject):
    prop = GObject.property(type=int)


def cb(sender, prop):
    print "property '%s' changed on %r." % (prop.name, sender)


inst = MyClass()
inst.connect("notify::prop", cb)
inst.prop = 42

 It took me a while to figure this out - hopefully I've saved someone else that work.

Indicator-jenkins is now even more awesome

My latest hobby project, indicator-jenkins is now even better (I wrote about this previously, in case you missed it).

New features since my last blog post:

• The code is now much nicer, and will be much easier to extend. My long-term goal is to support other types of CI servers (I'll probably have to change the project name I guess).
• Desktop notifications are generated for each new build of a monitored project. The notification includes the status and health report of the last build.
• LOTS of bug-fixes, especially around the settings UI. I'm still not happy with the settings dialog UI, but it's at least usable now.

To get it installed, do the following:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomir/indicator-jenkins

$ sudo apt-get install indicator-jenkins

Then launch indicator-jenkins from the unity dash or command line (Note: Launching it from the command line generates a LOT of debug output - I will turn this off in future releases).