I rely on indicator applets almost as much as I reply on Emesene, the open-source MSN messaging app for Linux.
So when the latest PPA build of the aforementioned amiable chat app DISABLED support for its very useful indicator applet I…
Well, I had to find a way to re-enable it, folks.
Thankfully, this wasn’t too hard to do — it did require more effort than I anticipated.
I know: it marks me out as a naive, novice coder. I went all smug, thinking: “Heh, easy-peasy; I bet I just need to uncomment a couple lines of code in a config file somewhere, hit save, and done”…
As it turns out, I had to make substantial changes that were easiest done by replacing the entire file.
But let’s back up.
Why made the developers of Emesene disable their nifty-new indicator applet (which makes changing online status a total breeze, among other actions) in the first place?
Stability – or lack thereof. They don’t feel the indicator applet works reliably enough. Since it’s their code, they know best, but, since I was using that applet on the daily and I’ve not had any issue with it, I think I know best.
Hubris, tsk.
Besides, being an Ubuntu fanboy, I’m simply now too accustomed to the uniform behaviour these newer indicator applets provide. I don’t want to go back to wildly inconsistent system tray menus.
So I figured out how to re-enable it — if you’d like to re-enable it too, read on!
Re-enable Indicator Applet in Emesene 1.6.x
Since I’m not a developer, I will skip giving a big recap of exactly what I did to re-enable it and instead share a copy of a now-working trayicon.py file. You can download this file and and replace your copy with mine (but make a backup first, okay).
If you use Emesene from a PPA, replace the file in /usr/share/emesene. If you use Emesene from source, replace the one in the branch folder. If you use it from some other format or package type, you may need to hunt around.
This is only a temporary fix, and when you next update Emesene (either from source or PPA) the fixed file will be over-written. Maybe keep a copy handy to re-replace if the indicator applet is still MIA in future builds.