Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Code review catch up

Trying to catch up a bit on code reviews from the mailing list.

macOS spicy build

Still getting the following warning:

configure: WARNING: The vp8dec vp9dec GStreamer element(s) are missing. You should be able to find them in the gst-plugins-good 1.0 package.

I believe everything should be installed. Are these codecs not available in the macOS version?

Mac display bug

Had a very interesting yet annoying display bug on the MacBook. After waking up from screen saver with the Apple Watch, I noticed that the built-in screen stayed black. It was hosting things like Adium, etc. I tried unplugging / replugging the external displays, going to sleep and back, using the brightness controls, etc, nothing would wake up the screen.

I left things running for a while, because I did not want to lose the testing that was in progress or my editor / terminal windows state. But in the evening, I rebooted the machine and I saw that:

This is not very visible, but the borders of the screen are completely washed out, and even the center area no longer has a uniform color. It is all washed out, with faded colors.

The problem is there during early boot, and then with any operating system, so it's clearly not just a software problem (or if it is, it is deep into the low-level BIOS, I doubt that).

[Update: After letting the machine rest overnight, the problem went away. So I guess the screen driver crashed and just sent the LCD into "overdrive", probably twisting it a bit too far. Fortunately, this is reversible.