There is a problem with the pycairo 1.8.2 C API. In pycairo-pattern.c, PyObject *PycairoPattern_FromPattern was changed from PyObject *PycairoPattern_FromPattern (cairo_pattern_t *pattern) to PyObject *PycairoPattern_FromPattern (cairo_pattern_t *pattern, PyObject *base) but in pycairo.h the typedef Pycairo_CAPI_t still has PyObject *(*Pattern_FromPattern)(cairo_pattern_t *pattern); This can cause problems for python modules/programs which use Pycairo_CAPI_t. Upgrading to pycairo 1.8.4 or 1.8.6, and recompiling all the modules which use Pycairo_CAPI_t (for example pygtk2 and pygoocanvas) fixes the problem.
Huh, I've had pycairo 1.8.6 built for Fedora 11 for awhile now but apparently never pushed it to Fedora Updates. Are you sure the other packages need rebuilt? Is this an ABI break somehow? What kind of problems is it causing currently?
Yes. Yes. http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23073
Neither of the reproducers in the fd.o bug throw an exception for me on Fedora 11 (the one using pygtk/pangocairo or the one that doesn't). What am I missing? Tested with: python-2.6-9.fc11.i586 pycairo-1.8.2-2.fc11.i586 pygtk2-2.14.1-1.fc11.i586
Did you test with both pycairo-1.8.2 and pycairo-1.8.6 ? The problem was: 1. pycairo-1.8.2 with pygtk2-2.14.1 worked OK. 2. Upgrading to pycairo-1.8.6 and using pygtk2-2.14.1 compiled against pycairo-1.8.2 gave the error. 3. Using pycairo-1.8.6 with pygtk2-2.14.1 recompiled against pycairo-1.8.6, fixed the problem.
It sounds then like Fedora 11 should remain frozen on pycairo 1.8.2 and live with the API discrepancy, since fixing it requires an ABI break. Rawhide already has pycairo 1.8.6, and we just had a mass rebuild of all Fedora 12 packages, so there should be no problems there. Is there anything more to do here?
It depends if you want to fix the underlying problem in Fedora 11, or simply wait for pycairo 1.8.6 in Fedora 12 where the problem will disappear. In pycairo 1.8.2 any other package which uses the pycairo C function PycairoPattern_FromPattern (or other functions listed after it in Pycairo_CAPI_t) will probably experience problems. There are not many packages using Pycairo_CAPI_t, so Fedora 11 may not receive any related bug reports. However, (non-Fedora) pygoocanvas 0.14 did experience problems, shown here http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=581895 and solved it by requiring pycairo 1.8.4.
I'd rather wait it out than break ABI in a stable Fedora release and deal with all the issues that brings. Thanks for bringing the issue to my attention though. I'll close this as being fixed in Rawhide.