Re: [gnome-flashback] The case for other WMs (was: Re: [gnome-panel] Pass --session-name from desktop files.)

[Sebastian Geiger <lanoxx gmx net>]

Hi Philipp and everyone,

I have experimented with different window managers including mutter, compiz, xfwm4 and metacity (possibly 
others, but i dont remeber all). My experience was, that all WMs except metacity have at least some 
bugs/glitches. For example when i run mutter, is draws huge black shadows around the windows when i switch 
between windows using Alt+tab. I also often experienced that window switching and unminizing got broken when 
i switched between different window managers.

In summary I think providing different sessions is useful to make debugging/developing easier but i am not 
sure if we should ship them to endusers. 

Best Regards
Sebastian

> On 08.12.2013, at 14:18, Philipp Kaluza <floss ghostroute eu> wrote:
>
> Hi Alberts, hi All,
>
> Am 08.12.2013 12:59, schrieb Alberts Muktupāvels:
> > >    Who tested this ?
> > >
> > >    In short, I don't think this should ever have passed the bugzilla
> > >    review
> > >    - there was a reason Jeremy Bicha and myself both independently
> > >    introduced a wrapper script, and that reason is that it is needed
> > >    - not
> > >    all display managers can pass on parameters in this way. (If memory
> > >    serves, GDM3 is one that cannot, and is most certainly a target
> > >    DM for us.)
> > >
> > >    So in short, NAK, I'll revert this
> > I tested, but tested only with lightdm. My fault. :(
>
> So it turns out you did not get the patch reviewed _at all_.
>
> This could have easily been caught by following the 4-eyes-principle.
>
> And this is not just a problem for that one patch, it is the case for
> multiple of your own patches you pushed yesterday and today.
> One of them also broke libpanel-applet API and ABI, without dicussing an
> ABI break beforehand here, and also without bumping the version number.
>
> Let me be clear: *This is not okay.*
>
> In this subproject we follow the best practices of the overall Gnome
> project, that a lot of sweat and experience went into. (Except
> time-based releases, and I hope to get there again eventually.)
>
> What do you hope to achieve by just pushing it ? Force someone to review
> it immediately, and after-the-fact ? You can ask/re-ask nicely for a
> review on this list, but nobody (me included) magically has more time
> for Gnome Flashback just because you create a big mess in master. Force
> me to test it all before pushing out 3.9.91 ? All you accomplished is
> that I will feel much less confident about the state of master, and will
> either need to revert everything comitted by you at once, or postpone
> the 3.9.91 release until I have A-LOT-OF-SPARE-TIME™.
>
> If you keep abusing your commit privileges like this, they can and will
> be revoked. :-(
>
> > Ok, but that means we need wrapper script for each session? One more
> > thing, TryExec is used to determinate if this session should be shown
> > or not. Am I correct? If so than should not we change TryExec line for
> > at mutter and compiz session to TryExec=mutter and TryExec=compiz. We
> > don't want show these sessions if these window managers are not available.
> The tryexec thing is a good idea, though you might want to list absolute
> paths.
>
> So basically, nobody except Ubuntu cares about compiz at this point.
>
> And we have only very limited support capabilities, so I am not
> interested in supporting multiple configurations upstream.
>
> Is anybody here interested in supporting other WMs except
> metacity/mutter ? If so, please speak up now, and make the case for
> supporting other WMs.
>
>
> Otherwise, we should make it perfectly clear to downstreams that it is
> not OK to ship a "Gnome Flashback (Compiz)" - the Gnome Flashback name
> is specifically reserved for a replacement for the old fallback mode.
> Let them name it "Gnome + Compiz" or whatever.
>
> About mutter:
> I know the mutter codebase is interesting, in that it has already done
> the hard work of porting to GTK+ 3. But current mutter cannot run
> without OpenGL, which goes somewhat against our initial mission
> statement. And I'm not aware if anybody actually regularly runs mutter
> without gnome-shell.
> Again: if anybody has any experience to share here and is willing to
> support it, please make the case for it. Otherwise I'm inclined to veto
> this as well.
>
> Cheers
>  Philipp
>
> -- 
> Philipp Kaluza
> Ghostroute IT Consulting
>
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