[this was noted on the gkrellm mailing list in April 2019] It is not clear what (if anything) changed, since there have been no apparent changes to the ebuild or source in years, but currently, due to an apparent bug in the Makefile, a critical function (gkrellm_init_plugin) is not included in the .so file, so the plugin fails to launch. The gentoo patch (originally from bug 335033) patches Makefile, but gkrellfire.o is missing from the recipe for gkrellfire.so. I'll attach a modified ebuild and patch. Also note that upstream seems to have disappeared, but the source tarball is still available from the SOURCE_URL.
Created attachment 579702 [details] proposed ebuild
Created attachment 579704 [details, diff] modified patch
SRC_URI="ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${P}.tgz" is the FreeBSD repository, but no upstream source. We should not use this as SRC_URI. (nearly) all other distribution have already tree cleaned this dead package. https://repology.org/project/gkrellfire/versions Found the mailinglist https://mailproc.sbbsnet.net/list/gkrellm@lists.netservicesgroup.com Is there a fork/new upstream home? This package faces to get treecleaned: Upstream is dead, no maintainer, package did not compile for a long time until someone found it out.
With the rather minor change I made to the patch, it compiles and runs just fine. I have not yet found a new home for upstream, but I may try playing with the source to tweak a few things, and if I succeed, I'll either put it on github or see if the main gkrellm team might be interested/able to host it. Hopefully treecleaning can hold off for a bit.
I think this can be closed, the problem appears to have been fixed in: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/commit/aaa3c4fb5ccab0619199d091a8bbf6b323a443ad (although referencing a different bug) The ebuild in question was removed in https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/commit/aadc7030fa04c8d22d656a079ea2c56168f54bbf
The main gkrellm developer (including this plugin) died last fall, and continued development has not yet been addressed. I'll close this as fixed, but might open a new bug for -r1, as I have a local copy with a change to the SRC_URI and a patch to increase the maximum width of the plugin's panel.
I'm sorry to hear that :-( I'm currently working on a big PR to update all users of gkrellm-plugin.eclass to EAPI 8 + bug fixing + some modernization while I'm at it: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/24737. x11-plugins/gkrellfire was next on the list, and then I found this bug. You're welcome to add comments if you like.
