Re: gnome-session

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU> writes:

> I would like to hack on some of the TODO entries of gnome-core/gsm,
> specifically:
> 
> - adding the ability to disable session management and only use the
>   unmanged applications list.
> - adding the ability to checkpoint a session at a time other than logout.
> 
> I already spoke with the maintainer (Tom Tromey, tromey@cygnus.com); I
> am sending mail here to make sure I am not duplicating work or
> stepping on someone's toes. If anyone else is working on this is would
> be good of them to let me know.

Nobody is going to fight you if you want to pick up gnome-session
and improve it. It's certainly not something I have time to
work on anymore; I suspect the same applies to Tom. And nobody
has heard from Felix for a long time.

I would, however, suggest that adding features should not be the first
step in working on gsm. The way that Felix extended the xsm protocol
by hacking a protocol on top of property setting has turned out to be
a big mistake - it makes the code very hard to understand, and
is also very difficult to extend.

The first thing that needs to be done is to rip out that extension and
replace it with a CORBA interface. gsm should be using xsm for what
xsm covers, and a CORBA interface for the things that xsm doesn't
cover - like getting a list of current clients.

Regards,
                                        Owen