libretro / libretro/RetroArch

accessibility causes retroarch to freeze, not announcing it's UI and must be killed with pkill in order to be closed.

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Dominant language
C
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Description

Is there an existing issue for this?
  • This is a bug in RetroArch frontend
  • I have searched the existing issues
Description

IN retroarch version 1.22, in fedora 43, retroarch seems to have a bug where, once accessibility is enabled retroarch will no longer read it's ui, and in fact must be killed with something like pkill in order to close. Steps to reproduc. Open retroarch, enable retroarch's accessibility support. It will initially read and navigate the ui, but once you save configuration and close, the bug kicks in and further starts of retroarch will no longer navigate the UI. This happens whether orca, the screen reader, is on or off, since retroarch uses espeak directly. The expected behavior is that retroarch should read it's ui and not freeze, requiring to be killed manually before it will close, but the actual behavior appears to be an application wide freeze of some sort, requiring pkill -9 or similar to kill the process, at which time retroarch closes and your normal linux applications resume functioning normally as they did before retroarch was opened

Expected behavior

No response

Steps to reproduce the bug

first, start retroarch. Then enable retroarch's accessibility support. You will initially be able to navigate retroarch's UI just fine, but upon saving and closing retroarch, the bug kicks in and subsequent starts will no longer read the UI and the app appears to freeze solid, requiring killing before it will close. I also tried retroarch inside a distrobox arch container to verify it was not a fedora specific issue and the same thing occured there, verifying it is a retroarch specific issue.

Version/Commit

1.22.0

Bisect Results

No response

Present in the nightly version

I don't know

Platform & operating system

fedora 43, 64 bit

Affected Cores

all cores

Environment information

No response

Relevant log output

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce the issue in RetroArch 1.22.0 by enabling accessibility, saving the configuration, closing, and starting it again on Fedora 43 or the reported Arch container. Investigate the accessibility support and direct espeak path first; done means the UI remains navigable and RetroArch closes normally without requiring pkill.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, linux
Domain
accessibility, desktop
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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