sloppy mouse focus broken in e17 since 3.1.x

[doctordirt]

In virtualbox 3.0.x there's no problem, but in 3.1.x the problem exists:

(sloppy focus with autoraise)

If I have the mouse pointer over one window and do an ALT-TAB to switch window the focus switches, (the pointer doesn't move) and when I press any key the press-event goes to the focused window and then the focus switches to the window under the pointer. This makes ALT-TAB unusable if the pointer is on top of any window (if the pointer is on the desktop the focus does not switch).

I'm attaching xev.txt which contains xev output from when I start xev (all new windows get focus) on 3.1.4 and press the letter 'a' while having the pointer on the terminal which starts xev. Xev only receives the keypress, not the keyrelease, and immediately a focus out event.

Also attaching xev2.txt which contains the same procedure on VB version 3.0.12; here we can see that xev receives the keypress event, the release event and an ALT-TAB is required to get to the focusout event.

This is on Debian unstable with e17 from svn, I've had this issue since the first 3.1 version came out, and I've tried all 3.1.x versions, but each time I've had to go back to virtualbox 3.0.x to have a functional alt-tab. Btw I've tested this in vmware too and there's no issue there.

[doctordirt]

alt-tab on 3.1.4

[doctordirt]

alt-tab on 3.0.12

[Michael Thayer]

What about the other way round? That is, (with 3.1) start xev, move the pointer over the xev window then Alt-Tab _back_ to the console and press a key?

[doctordirt]

Replying to michael:

What about the other way round? That is, (with 3.1) start xev, move the pointer over the xev window then Alt-Tab _back_ to the console and press a key?

xev3.txt contains the events from when I start xev, move the pointer to it, then alt tab away and press the letter 'a'.

In e17 the pointer is set to "slide" to a window that gets focus, this does only work when the pointer is "locked" to the virtualbox window, this is not a problem though, since the focus switches correctly (on 3.0.x).

While switching back and forth between versions I noticed that if I use the 3.0.12 modules in 3.1.4 the mouse works as previously in 3.0.x, eg the focus switches correctly. (No sliding pointer though, but I've never seen that in any virtual machine that has "seamless" pointer)

[Michael Thayer]

I can reproduce this behaviour with an Ubuntu 9.10 guest (as seen with xev, I didn't install E17), but not on an Ubuntu 8.04 guest. I also tested that we don't send those mouse events on the host side, and don't seem to be picking them up on the guest side either. Might this be a bug in more recent X servers like the server calling the mouse driver unnecessarily? See ​this blog entry for the hard job the X server has to do to handle input.