One of the things I miss in linux was the windows Gmail notifier. There is a linux version, written in Python, but it wasn't working in a 64 bit distribution. If you tried to run it out of the box, you would get the dreaded “wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32” exception, because the distributed shared object to create a tray icon was compiled in 32 bits. If you tried to grab another version compiled in 64 bits, you now got the “undefined symbol: Py_InitModule4” error, which was caused because some file headers were redefined and renamed to avoid conflicts (sic!) in 64 bits. I was going nuts at this point, because I am most certainly not a Python programmer. But I still managed to find a fix, before everybody else on the net, woohoo!
A simple cure in 3 easy steps
1. get package python-gnome2-extras
2. change a few lines in notify.py as described below:
#comment out the pytrayicon import and import egg and egg.trayicon
#import pytrayicon
import egg
import egg.trayicon
#change the way the tray object is built
#create the tray icon object
#self.tray = pytrayicon.TrayIcon(self.lang.get_string(21));
self.tray = egg.trayicon.TrayIcon(self.lang.get_string(21));
3. enjoy!
Works like a charm :D
This makes me go squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!