Release history — dbus-python 1.2.8 documentation

# Release history

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.2.8 (2018-05-04)

The “cursed ice surface” release.

Dependencies:

- Documentation requires Sphinx and the readthedocs theme
- Documentation no longer requires epydoc

Enhancements:

- Build documentation with Sphinx instead of epydoc
- Remove obsolete COMPAT.txt, documenting compatibility breaks in versions over a decade old

Fixes:

- Make sure $(builddir)/test exists before creating .test files there
- Add PKG-INFO and egg_info to dist tarballs so they can be uploaded to PyPI again

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.2.6 (2018-01-29)

The “doppler radar” release.

Dependencies:

- When using Python 2, version 2.7 is now required. Python 2.6 security support ended in 2013.
- When using Python 3, version 3.4 or later is now required. Python 3.2 security support ended in 2016, and Python 3.3 security support ended in 2017.
- Most unit tests now require the tap.py module from PyPI.
- The deprecated dbus-glib library is no longer required. A bundled copy of its main loop integration code is included instead.
- GLib version 2.40 or later is required.
- libdbus version 1.8 or later is required.

Enhancements:

- AX_PYTHON_DEVEL is now used to find the CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS and libraries needed to link test-import-repeatedly to libpython, which should reduce the number of wheels reinvented here.
- Remove workarounds for Python 2.6 limitations
- All unit tests now produce structured output (TAP)

Fixes:

- Fix a NULL dereference in constructing a Server if the underlying C function fails
- Silence compiler warnings triggered by the Python headers under gcc 7
- Avoid __gtype__ appearing in documentation, for reproducible builds
- Rename _dbus_bindings/ and _dbus_glib_bindings/ source directories to dbus_bindings/ and dbus_glib_bindings/ to avoid an ImportWarning appearing in the API documentation, which made the documentation build non-reproducible

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.2.4 (2016-03-06)

The “75,000 microchips” release.

Enhancements:

- Continous integration metadata for travis-ci.org is now available. Similar to dbus, this is split into .travis.yml (Travis-specifics) and tools/ci-build.sh (intended to be useful for any CI framework, although it does include various workarounds for travis-ci oddities). (Simon McVittie)

Fixes:

- Make dbus.version a tuple again, not a list, for consistent sorting. This was a regression in 1.2.2. (Debian #816729, Simon McVittie)
- Use inspect.signature() instead of inspect.getargspec() on Python versions that have it. inspect.getargspec() is deprecated in recent Python 3 and seems to have disappeared from 3.6 nightly builds. (Simon McVittie)
- Make the tests pass in “narrow” Python builds where unicode objects are UTF-16, rather than the UCS-4 used in Linux distributions. (fd.o #57140, Simon McVittie)
- Always include headers in a consistent order (Debian #749133, Simon McVittie)
- Include config.h in all C code that we compile. This is necessary on platforms where it might contain something like “#define _GNU_SOURCE” or “#define inline __inline”. (Simon McVittie)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.2.2 (2016-02-22)

The “mind fray” release.

Versioning changes:

- dbus-python releases now have an even micro version (1.2.0, 1.2.2), and snapshots from git have an odd micro version (1.2.1).

Dependencies:

- Building from git (but not from tarballs) now requires macros from the GNU Autoconf Archive, for example the autoconf-archive package in Debian or Fedora derivatives.
- Building from git (but not from tarballs) now requires Automake 1.13 or later.
- The automated tests and some examples now require PyGI (the gi module), not PyGObject 2 (the deprecated glib and gobject modules).

Enhancements:

- There is now a setuptools setup.py, allowing dbus-python to be installed into a virtualenv using pip from a standard Automake source release. This requires pre-existing system-wide installations of the normal build dependencies (pkg-config, libdbus, dbus-glib, a C compiler) and has some limitations. For system-wide installations and development, please use the Autoconf/Automake build system directly. (fd.o #55439; Simon McVittie)
- dbus-python now uses the common compiler warnings from AX_COMPILER_FLAGS (Simon McVittie)
- The automated tests can now be installed as GNOME-style “installed tests”, and should be somewhat more reliable (Simon McVittie)

Fixes:

- `from dbus.service import *` now imports FallbackObject (fd.o #85720; Ben Longbons)
- The GConf-related examples work again (fd.o #85720; Ben Longbons)
- Consistently make examples executable, and install them all (fd.o #85720; Ben Longbons)
- Search PATH for an appropriately-versioned pythonX.Y-config, or as a last resort python-config, if there isn’t a ${PYTHON}-config in the same directory as ${PYTHON} (fd.o #92085; Yamashita, Yuu)
- Add support for the Automake 1.13 parallel test driver (Simon McVittie)
- Skip building API documentation if “import epydoc” fails (Simon McVittie)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.2.0 (2013-05-07)

The “compile like it’s 1998” release.

Dependencies:

- libdbus 1.6 or later is now required.

Enhancements:

- Unicode Corrigendum 9: when used with a suitable version of libdbus (1.6.10 or later, or 1.7.2 or later), noncharacters in strings are now accepted

Fixes:

- Support DBusException(‘something with non—ASCII’) under Python 2 (Michael Vogt, smcv; fd.o #55899)
- Correct some misleading wording in COPYING which was written under the assumption that libdbus could actually be relicensed to MIT/X11 (Thiago Macieira)
- Avoid variable-length arrays, because MSVC++ is still stuck in 1998 (based on patches from Christoph Höger, fd.o #51725)
- Remove unnecessary uses of stdint.h (fd.o #51725)
- Add support for Unix compilers not supporting ‘inline’, for completeness
- Use GObject.__class__ instead of GObjectMeta, which can no longer be imported from gi.repository.GObject in pygobject 3.8
- Fix autoreconfiscation on Automake 1.13 (Marko Lindqvist, fd.o #59006)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.1.1 (2012-06-25)

The “Lemonade Sky” release.

Dependencies:

- libdbus 1.6 or later is now recommended. It is not strictly required yet.

Fixes:

- Validate UTF-8 according to the rules libdbus uses, falling back to our own (inefficient) implementation if not compiled against dbus >= 1.6 (fd.o #40817)
- Under Python 3, in the absence of introspection or signature=’…’, pass dbus.ObjectPath or dbus.Signature arguments with the obvious signature ‘o’ or ‘g’, not ‘s’. This previously only worked in Python 2. (fd.o #50740)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.1.0 (2012-05-09)

The “eaten by spiders” release.

Deprecations:

- dbus.gobject_service is deprecated. Use dbus.gi_service and PyGI in new code.

API changes:

- dbus.gobject_service works in legacy PyGObject 2 applications again, like it did before 1.0. The down side is that it doesn’t work in all PyGI applications any more, unlike 1.0. In PyGI applications, depend on dbus-python >= 1.1 and use dbus.gi_service instead - its API is the same. (fd.o #48904, Debian #670516)
- dbus.gobject_service has been removed from Python 3 builds altogether.

Enhancements:

- Use DBusBasicValue from libdbus 1.5, if available, rather than reinventing it

Fixes:

- Put sockets for the regression tests in /tmp, not the builddir, fixing test failures in a really long builddir (fd.o #46747)
- Fix a reference leak in dbus_py_variant_level_set (fd.o #47108)
- Modify AM_CHECK_PYTHON_HEADERS so the “another way” works with Python 3

## D-Bus Python Bindings 1.0.0 (2012-01-24)

The “never trust a .0 release?” release.

Dependencies:

- libdbus 1.4 or later is now required.
- Python 2.6 or later is now required. If Python 3 is used, it must be version 3.2 or later.
- GNU make (or, at your own risk, another make with the GNU $(patsubst) extension) is now required.

API changes:

- dbus_bindings, which was never meant to be public API and has been deprecated for nearly 5 years, has finally been removed.
- The repr() of every dbus-python object is now unicode.
- The Python 3 API is not the same as the Python 2 API; see PY3PORT.rst for details.

- dbus.gobject_service uses PyGI, not PyGObject. (This was not meant to be an incompatible change, but unfortunately, it was. It was reverted in 1.1.0.)

Enhancements:

- Python 3 compatibility (fd.o #26420, Barry Warsaw)
- MethodCallMessage and SignalMessage now have a more useful repr() (Barry Warsaw)

Fixes:

- OOM while appending a unicode object to a message no longer leaks a string (Barry Warsaw)
- If libdbus somehow gives us invalid UTF-8, don’t crash (Barry Warsaw)
- Fix rst2html failure in non-UTF-8 locales (Alexandre Rostovtsev)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.84.0 (2011-05-25)

The “Comrade Bill Bartram’s Egalitarian Anti-Imperialist Soviet Stout” release.

Enhancements:

- fd.o #30812: add the UnixFd type, and support Unix fd passing if compiled against a new enough libdbus (Elvis Pfützenreuter)
- fd.o #34342: add Connection.set_allow_anonymous(bool) (Scott Tsai)
- fd.o #21017: add configure arguments PYTHON_INCLUDES and PYTHON_LIBS which can be used to override $PYTHON-config (Simon McVittie, based on a patch from Robert Schwebel)

Fixes:

- fd.o #35626: clear ProxyObject’s pending introspection queue after execution (Scott Tsai)
- fd.o #22560: remove duplicate code from example-async-client (Simon McVittie)
- fd.o #36206: allow signature=’x’ among ProxyObject method arguments (Simon McVittie)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.83.2 (2010-12-02)

Dependencies:

- libdbus 1.2 is still supported, but libdbus >= 1.4 is recommended.

Fixes:

- Make BusConnection.list_activatable_names actually call ListActivatableNames, not ListNames (Johan Sandelin)
- Don’t override CFLAGS when adding compiler warnings (Louis-Francis Ratté-Boulianne)
- Fix compilation on platforms where Py_ssize_t is larger than int, like x86-64 (Elvis Pfützenreuter)
- fd.o #21831: deserialize empty byte arrays with byte_arrays=True as ByteArray(‘’), not ByteArray(‘None’) (Simon McVittie)
- fd.o #23278, #25105: fix crashes when trying to append more struct entries than the signature allows with libdbus 1.4 (Simon McVittie)
- fd.o #23831: fix crashes when an embedded Python interpreter imports dbus, is finalized, is re-initialized, and re-imports dbus (Simon McVittie)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.83.1 (2010-02-18)

Fixes:

- fd.o #21172: avoid some deprecation warnings in Python 2.6
- fd.o #15013: add dbus.lowlevel.MESSAGE_TYPE_SIGNAL etc., for those who care about message types at a low level
- When removing signal matches, clean up internal state, avoiding a memory leak in long-lived Python processes that connect to signals from arbitrarily many object paths (fd.o #17551, thanks to Marco Pesenti Gritti)
- When setting the sender of a message, allow it to be org.freedesktop.DBus so you can implement a D-Bus daemon in pure Python (patch from Huang Peng)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.83.0 (2008-07-23)

Features:

- Add bindings for DBusServer (thanks to Mathias Hasselmann, Huang Peng; fd.o #14322, #15514).
- Omit the service’s traceback from certain D-Bus errors: specifically, those that were probably deliberately raised as part of an API. Subclasses of DBusException that indicate programmer error can turn the traceback back on if it seems likely to be useful.

Fixes:

- Don’t emit spurious Error messages if libdbus gives object-path handlers a message that isn’t a method call (most likely because of binding to a locally emitted signal, as in fd.o #14199).
- Make multiple filters added by Connection.add_message_filter work (fd.o #15547, thanks to Huang Peng).
- Make the API docs build correctly when out-of-tree
- Require dbus 1.0 so we can get rid of DBUS_API_SUBJECT_TO_CHANGE

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.82.4 (2007-12-10)

Fixes:

- supplying reply_handler but not error_handler raises MissingReplyHandlerException instead of MissingErrorHandlerException, and vice versa (fd.o #12304, patch from René Neumann)
- Using non-recursive make for dbus/ directory should fix builds in some environments (fd.o #12741)

Licensing:

- Everything is now under the same MIT/X11 license used for Collabora code in the previous release
- Added copyright headers to some files that were still missing them

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.82.3 (2007-09-27)

Fixes:

- Out-of-tree builds with an absolute $(srcdir) can now build docs and run tests
- Closing private dbus.Bus no longer raises KeyError (fd.o #12096)
- async_err_cb(MyException()) now works (fd.o #12403)
- dbus.service.Object.remove_from_connection no longer claims that multiple exports aren’t possible (fd.o #12432)
- Setting _dbus_error_name as a class attribute of DBusException subclasses works again

Deprecations:

- dbus.Bus(private=True) (use dbus.bus.BusConnection in new code, dbus.Bus basically just adds the shared-connection behaviour)

Licensing:

- Code for which Collabora is the only copyright holder is now under the same permissive MIT/X11 license under which dbus core is being relicensed (this allows everything the old license would have allowed, and more)

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.82.2 (2007-08-01)

Incompatibility with 0.82.1:

- If you pass the timeout argument to call_async or an asynchronous proxy method call and expect it to be in milliseconds, you should change the argument to be in seconds, and require dbus-python >= 0.82.2.

  This feature didn’t work at all in versions prior to 0.82.1, so any code that works with 0.82.0 or earlier is unaffected.

Features:

- @dbus.service.method supports a rel_path_keyword argument for the benefit of fallback objects, which provides the method implementation with the path of the object within the exported subtree. For instance, if you have a fallback object exported at /Fallback, and you call a method that has rel_path_keyword=’rel_path’ on /Fallback and on /Fallback/Some/Where, the method implementation will be called with rel_path=’/’ and with rel_path=’/Some/Where’ respectively. (fd.o #11623)
- If you have epydoc version 3 (currently in beta), API documention is now generated by default.

Fixes:

- As mentioned under “Incompatibilities” above, Connection.call_async() measures timeouts in seconds, as was always intended. This means that calls through a proxy object with a reply_handler and error_handler will measure the timeout in seconds too.
- Introspect() now works on objects exported in more than one location. (fd.o #11794)
- Building against Python 2.4 on non-Debian-derived distributions, or a non-default Python version on Gentoo, should work again (revenge of fd.o #11282, thanks Eyal Ben David).

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.82.1 (2007-07-11)

The “double precision” release.

Fixes:

- Parse the timeout correctly in send_message_with_reply() and send_message_with_reply_and_block(), fixing the use of non-default timeouts (bugs.fd.o #11489)
- The tutorial no longer uses interactive-Python syntax, as it confused users. (bugs.fd.o #11209)
- When making a call via a proxy object with ignore_reply=True, also get the necessary introspection data asynchronously. This can avoid deadlocks in some cases, such as calling methods in the same process (though this is not recommended, for efficiency and sanity reasons).
- dbus.lowlevel exposes enough constants to write correct filter functions.
- We don’t use dbus_watch_get_fd() (deprecated in libdbus) unless our libdbus is too old to have the modern replacement, dbus_watch_get_unix_fd().

Deprecations:

- Omitting the bus argument in the BusName constructor is deprecated. The fact that it uses the globally shared connection to the session bus by default is uncomfortably subtle.

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.82.0 (2007-06-19)

Features:

- dbus.service.Object can start off with no Connection or object path, and become exported later. If suitable class attributes are set, objects can even be exported on multiple connections, or with multiple object-paths, or both.
- dbus.service.FallbackObject implements a whole subtree of object-path space (fd.o #9295).
- `@method` accepts a parameter `connection_keyword` so methods can find out which connection to use for any follow-up actions.
- `@signal` has a new parameter `rel_path_keyword` which gets the path at which to emit the signal, relative to the path of the FallbackObject. `path_keyword` is now deprecated, and will raise an exception if used on an object with `SUPPORTS_MULTIPLE_OBJECT_PATHS`, including any `FallbackObject`.

Fixes:

- In watch_name_owner, only the desired name is watched!
- When cleaning up signal matches, errors are ignored. This avoids using up scarce pending-call allowance on dbus-daemon < 1.1, and emitting error messages if we get disconnected.
- Signal handlers which are bound to a unique name are automatically disconnected when the unique name goes away, reducing the likelihood that applications will leak signal matches.
- Some corrections were made to the tutorial (@service and @method take a parameter dbus_interface, not just interface; fd.o #11209).
- ${PYTHON}-config is used to get the Python include path (patch from Sebastien Bacher/Ubuntu, fd.o #11282).

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.81.1 (4 June 2007)

Features:

- When an Error message on the bus is represented as a DBusException, the error name is copied into the exception and can be retrieved by get_dbus_name(). Exception handlers should use this instead of looking at the stringified form of the exception, unless backwards compatibility is needed.
- DBusException objects now get all arguments from the Error message, not just the first (although there will usually only be one). Use the ‘args’ attribute if you need to retrieve them.
- The Connection, BusConnection and Bus classes have a method list_exported_child_objects(path: str) -> list of str, which wraps dbus_connection_list_registered()
- You can remove objects from D-Bus before they become unreferenced, by using dbus.service.Object.remove_from_connection() (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10457)

Bug fixes:

- Don’t deadlock when removing a signal match that tracks name-owner changes. (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=426412)
- Include child nodes in introspection using list_exported_child_objects()

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.81.0 (9 May 2007)

### The ‘series of tubes’ release

This is a feature release with support for non-bus-daemon connections and improved GObject integration.

Features:

- Bus has a superclass dbus.bus.BusConnection (a connection to a bus daemon, but without the shared-connection semantics or any deprecated API) for the benefit of those wanting to subclass bus daemon connections
- BusConnection has a superclass dbus.connection.Connection (a connection without a bus daemon) for use in peer-to-peer situations, or distributed pseudo-bus situations without a bus daemon such as Telepathy’s Tubes API
- dbus.gobject_service.ExportedGObject is like dbus.service.Object, but is also a subclass of GObject (with the necessary metaclass magic to make this work). Until someone has verified that the GObject side of things works as expected too, I consider this API to be potentially subject to change!
- Connection and BusConnection have gained a number of useful methods, including watch_name_owner (track name owner changes asynchronously, avoiding race conditions), call_blocking and call_async (blocking and asynchronous method calls without going via a proxy - note that these are semi-low-level interfaces which don’t do introspection), and list_names, list_activatable_names and get_name_owner which are simple wrappers for the corresponding org.freedesktop.DBus methods
- dbus.Interface (now also available at dbus.proxies.Interface) and dbus.proxies.ProxyObject now have some reasonably obvious properties.

Deprecations:

- All keyword arguments called named_service are deprecated in favour of an argument called bus_name (to be compatible with both older and newer dbus-python, you should pass these positional arguments).
- The bus keyword argument to dbus.proxies.ProxyObject is deprecated in favour of an argument called conn, because proxies will work on non-bus connections now (again, for maximum compatibility you should use a positional argument for this).
- No warning is raised for this, but I consider calling any remote method on a ProxyObject or Interface whose name is either alllowercase or lower_case_with_underscores to be deprecated, and reserve the right to add properties or methods of this form in future releases - use ProxyObject.get_dbus_method if you must call a remote method named in this way. Methods named following TheUsualDBusConvention or theJavaConvention are safe.

Bugfixes:

- Exceptions in signal handlers print a stack trace to stderr (this can be redirected elsewhere with Python’s logging framework). Partially addresses fd.o #9980.
- The reserved local interface and object path are properly checked for.
- When you return a tuple that is not a Struct from a method with no out_signature, it’s interpreted as multiple return values, not a single Struct (closes fd.o #10174).
- If send_with_reply() returns TRUE but with pending call NULL, dbus-python no longer crashes. This can happen when unexpectedly disconnected.
- Arguments are not examined for functions declared METH_NOARGS (this is unnecessary and can cause a crash).

Other notable changes:

- dbus-python uses the standard Python logging framework throughout. The first time a WARNING or ERROR is generated, it will configure the logging framework to output to stderr, unless you have already configured logging in your application.
- The tutorial now advocates the use of add_signal_receiver if all you want to do is listen for signals: this avoids undesired activation, e.g. of Listen or Rhythmbox (!). Addresses fd.o #10743, fd.o #10568.

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.80.2 (13 February 2007)

- Fix numerous memory and reference leaks
- Only use -Werror if the user specifically asks for it
- Audit tp_dealloc callbacks to make sure they correctly preserve the exception state
- Relicense files solely owned by Collabora Ltd. more permissively (LGPL/AFL rather than GPL/AFL) - this includes the tutorial and all the C code

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.80.1 (24 January 2007)

- The “oops” release
- Install dbus/_version.py, so dbus.__version__ exists again

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.80.0 (24 January 2007)

- The “everything changes” release
- Rewrite dbus_bindings (Pyrex) as _dbus_bindings (C) - API changes!
- Define what’s public API
- Move low-level but still public API to dbus.lowlevel
- Remove Variant class, add variant_level property on all D-Bus types
- Make signal matching keep working as expected when name ownership changes
- Use unambiguous D-Bus types when transferring from D-Bus to Python
- Follow well-defined rules when transferring from Python to D-Bus
- Add utf8_strings and byte_arrays options in various places, so a user can tweak the calling conventions to be more efficient
- Raise RuntimeError if user tries to use a connection with no main loop to do something that won’t work without one
- Make asynchronous method calls actually asynchronous when made before introspection results come back
- Redo main loop machinery so we can add pure-Python main loops later without API breakage
- Allow construction of a dbus.service.Object if you don’t have a BusName (or even a Bus)
- Port introspection XML parser from libxml2 (external package) to expat (included with Python)
- Port build system from distutils to autoconf/automake/libtool
- Install a header file for third-party main loop integration
- Make compatible with Python 2.5, including on 64-bit platforms
- Add docstrings throughout
- Add more tests and examples
- Add interoperability tests (which interoperate with Java)
- Add copyright notices!

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.71 (24 July 2006)

- Binary modules are now installed in the correct directory
- Distutils exports the dbus and dbus-glib cflags

## D-Bus Python Bindings 0.70 (17 July 2006)

- First release of bindings split
- Move to a distutils build enviornment
- It is possible to now specify sender_keyword=”foo”, path_keyword=”bar” when adding a signal listener