Re: xdg-app discussions at the GNOME DX hackfest

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Fri, 2015-01-30 at 14:54 +0100, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On fre, 2015-01-30 at 11:28 +0000, Allan Day wrote:
<snip>
> * What happens when multiple versions of an app is installed?
> Say TheApp 2.0 and 2.2 is installed. Both of these will have the same
> dbus id, and thus necessarily the same desktop file id name. We can't
> auto-rename this during export, because it *has* to be the name of the
> dbus name. Not to mention that the UI in the shell when launching apps
> will be very confusing.
>
> The resolution we came up with here is that xdg-app needs to track which
> version of an app is "active", and only export the files from that one.
> One could then swap this at a later time. If the developer wants to have
> parallel installable apps will have to rename one of them. The typical
> usecase for this is beta/development releases of an app. Such apps could
> be renamed to e.g. "TheApp (Testing)" in the desktop file and
> org.foo.TheApp.Testing as the dbus name. Ryan wanted to add an option to
> GApplication to be able to use a custom dbus name, then this renaming
> could be done purely in the desktop/service file rather than having to
> rebuild the app.

This is something that would be useful right now, so I can run both my
main web browser, or video player, and still be able to hack on them ;)

<snip>