Re: Where can I find detailed extension API changes of gnome-shell 3.12 ?

[邓尧 <torshie gmail com>]

On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 12:24 AM, Norman L. Smith <nls1729 gmail com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2015-05-05 at 21:50 +0800, 邓尧 wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I feel it's very inconvenience to use gnome-shell without the YAWL
> > extension. The extension is only partially functional under 3.12, and
> > the author has already abandoned it.
> > After some extensive Googling with no luck, I decided to fix it
> > myself. I'm planning to start with API changes
> >
> > I'm new to gnome-shell extension development, any suggestion would be
> > appreciated.
>
> Writing gnome shell extensions is more a patching operation than
> developing with an API.
I'm quite surprised by this design decision. Although it offers
greater freedom for extension development, it makes extension
maintenance difficult.

> Writing Gnome Shell Extensions requires access to the shell source
> code.  The shell sources became binary as gresouces with version
> 3.12. The sources must be extracted for examination.
>
> The following links may be of help to you.
>
> http://worldofgnome.org/how-to-extract-shell-from-gresource
>
> https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/03/24/keeping-gnome-shell-approachable/
>
> With sources of the older shell and the extension you can examine
> the newer shell code to determine what has changed.  Sometimes it is
> easy and sometimes it is a quite a task to duplicate an extension's
> functionality in the new shell.
>
> As an example I have a small personal extension I moved from 3.10
> (35 lines) to 3.16 (207 lines).  At first look I said to myself
> I'm not sure this can be done.  It took a completely different
> approach and a re-write.
The YAWL extension failed to get all windows in current workspace, I'm
still struggling with its own source code.

> I hope this is helpful.
>
> Regards,
> Norman
> --
> "The source code is the documentation.", uttered by so many.