Parasite – Firebug for GTK+ Applications | Hacker News Reader

Parasite – Firebug for GTK+ Applications

chipx86.github.io

94 pointslelf20 comments

Hah, well, wouldn't have expected to see this on Hacker News all these years later.

This got folded up into GTK+ years back as the GTK Inspector, so we dropped further development on it. They could do more with this being part of GTK+ than we could as a loadable module.

I also don't really work on GTK-based applications anymore, so it didn't make sense to continue development when I no longer had a vested interest in building new features for it. Instead, I build Review Board (https://www.reviewboard.org -- code review product) full-time now. Takes about 156% of my time.

The little Parasite bug lives on, though, as the mascot for Splat, a bug tracker we maintain for our needs (and might turn into a product someday). See https://hellosplat.com/tour/ for more drawings of the little guy.

I've updated the website and GitHub to point to GtkInspector as the successor. Hopefully that helps!

Ah, reviewboard, I remember using that back when Mozilla used it. I quite liked it, was good for interdiffs.

Which reminds me, I filed a security bug years ago against it (using the mentioned Splat), and no one seems to have ever noticed/looked at it. #4614 if you're interested

Ah yes, I remember this. We did see it and looked into it at the time (and I've just gone over it again). It's really a different problem than it seems. Not a security issue, but I can see where it'd look like it. Kind of a terrible quirk with the unreliability of diffs.

We discussed it internally, but those discussions never moved to the bug. I'll follow up on there, give you an overview of why you saw the behavior you did and our rationale.

Thanks for the poke!

Someone below recommended linking to the gtk inspector to help inform people landing on the webpage.

SPLAT! is also the name of a well-known radio propagation tool (https://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/splat.html )

The equivalent for Qt (but much more powerful) is GammaRay (https://www.kdab.com/development-resources/qt-tools/gammaray...)

The website could maybe mention and link to GTK Inspector? That is the recommended alternative/replacement to this for some years now.

I used gtkparasite almost 10 years ago when I was learning GTK+, was quite useful :)

I'm very glad to hear that :)

Took your suggestion and updated the webpage!

Last commit on master: Dec 30, 2013. Maybe a [2013] tag could be added in the title!

I remember feeling excited about this when it came out. But if you look at the github, it hasn't seen any updates for six years.

It's built into GTK+ now as GtkInspector: https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/05/15/introducing-gtkin...

The mascot is really adorable :D

Thanks!

Does this work on Google Chrome?

You can attach it to Chrome: https://imgur.com/n8Mf7J3

You can't do much more than changing the theme though, as Chrome window is managed mostly by its own rendering engine.

You can also make it run in Chrome, via GTK Broadway https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-broadway.html

  broadwayd :5
  GTK_DEBUG=interactive GDK_BACKEND=broadway BROADWAY_DISPLAY=:5 gnome-calculator

Then go to http://127.0.0.1:8085 to see the inspector. Sadly, the calculator itself won't be visible (it would have been without the debugger).

You cannot make Chrome render in Chrome this way, though, as it complains about lack of X display available.

Google Chrome already has integrated developer tools inspired by Firebug, and has for years.

My guess is parent was asking if Parasite/gtk inspector can be used on the chrome application itself.

AFAIK they have nothing in common whatsoever.

I think he is talking about using it from Chrome which uses gtk and yes it is possible but as pzmarzly pointed out:

"You can attach it to Chrome: https://imgur.com/n8Mf7J3

You can't do much more than changing the theme though, as Chrome window is managed mostly by its own rendering engine."

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