[gpm] Limiting inhibition by applications

[Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>]

Hi!

In recent GNOME versions, more and more applications use D-Bus to
inhibit suspend and hibernate when they're working on tasks that should
not be interrupted. This is great and I love how this communication
system works.

However, at least since 2.24, manual suspend (as opposed to
automatically trigger by inactivity) is forbidden when an application
has told g-p-m to inhibit this action. This results in a nice
notification explaining (very well designed) who and why.

IMHO this is a little too much: for example, I'm using Transmission in
the background, and it logically prevents the system from suspending
automatically, so that downloading is not stopped. But sometimes I want
to hibernate, and restart my computer later, and I'd like my downloads
to resume then. But g-p-m forbids me to do so, and I'm forced to stop
manually Transmission before hibernating, thus I need to restart it
later, and it reduces the interest of hibernate/suspend.

What I think is that inhibition should not prevent users from doing
anything. This is absolutely frustrating; instead, the desktop is here
to work for me. So would there be an issue if we force hibernation has
it was before? I can imagine it may be complex: Rhythmbox doesn't care
if I hibernate while playing, but Brasero would trash my CD-R. And
Transmission would like to be made aware of hibernation so that it can
close connexions with the server before that.

Would an extension of the current design make sense? I'm thinking of
news functions that the apps could use according to their needs, like:
absolutely inhibit suspend/hibernate; please just tell me before the
system hibernate, and trigger a callback function; merely inhibit
automatic sleep. This would be more flexible and more suited to what a
desktop really needs. What do you think? I can have a look at the code
if it's worth... Or maybe this should go in DeviceKit-Power?

Cheers