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

Hi Deng,

And thank you for your interest in my extension.
Indeed, de facto, I have not been developing for GS for quite a while now, for several reasons. And the difficulty of maintaining of extensions, is one of them. Unfortunately, the GS team expressed explicitly the lack of their interest in further supporting of extensions, and it became more and more difficult to develop, support and even submit extensions. I have moved to Linux Mint Debian since that, and wanted to port YAWL at first, but the truth is that I have literally forgotten about it since then, as so far I felt no need to either add any functionality to the OS, or even reinstall it, as it is a rolling distribution.
A good OS is the one you quickly forget about. In the sense that the most important part of OS, in my opinion, is its ability not to interfere with the user. This is why, for example, Windows 8 sucked from day one on desktops. But, at least, they listen to users and developers, and move forward. An iconic example here is the removal of the Start menu, which is now back in Windows 10 in some form due to massive complaints. I had same feelings towards GS, when it was too young to give any reasonable critique, and when I saw significant progress from the initial version 3.0 to 3.8. At the same time, over years, what I saw was the clear tendency to keep dropping functionality instead of improving it, and move further away from what people say, expect or help to develop for GS.
In any case, I believe there are many who feel differently, and, honestly, I have not seen the most recent developments in GS, so it is hard for me to give any updated opinion on this matter. So, I apologize in advance, in case I missed some serious changes in the way it works now, especially regarding extension development, or at least attitude towards contributions by others.
And to be clear and fair, I am not the one who has any hate-like attitude to GS. After all, I devoted several years to using it, and more than a year to developing for it. But I just moved on.
That being said, I would be more than happy to help you, or anyone else interested for that matter, personally. I believe, it would be more helpful if you could communicate your questions to me directly, and get the first hand help with developing, debugging etc. and explanations of the extension functionality. The only thing I miss for now, is the great community of enthusiastic users and extension developers truly wanting GS to eventually succeed. So, I would definitely help such people, and please feel free to PM me, and we will figure that out. 

Vadim.


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Today's Topics:

    1. Where can I find detailed extension API changes of
       gnome-shell 3.12 ? (??)
    2. Re: Where can I find detailed extension API changes of
       gnome-shell      3.12 ? (Norman L. Smith)
    3. Re: Where can I find detailed extension API changes of
       gnome-shell      3.12 ? (??)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 5 May 2015 21:50:11 +0800
From: ?? <torshie gmail com>
To: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Where can I find detailed extension API changes of
        gnome-shell 3.12 ?
Message-ID:
        <CAOb3iuhHrv1z83RPaoO2RLBgPiL2UndkT6F5mk2aV-1kb3f-qQ mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

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.

Thanks
Deng Yao


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 05 May 2015 12:24:12 -0400
From: "Norman L. Smith" <nls1729 gmail com>
To: ?? <torshie gmail com>
Cc: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Re: Where can I find detailed extension API changes of
        gnome-shell     3.12 ?
Message-ID: <1430843052 22387 13 camel valkyrie newbarnyard net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Tue, 2015-05-05 at 21:50 +0800, ?? 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.
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.

I hope this is helpful.

Regards,
Norman
--
"The source code is the documentation.", uttered by so many.



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 12:58:21 +0800
From: ?? <torshie gmail com>
To: "Norman L. Smith" <nls1729 gmail com>
Cc: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Re: Where can I find detailed extension API changes of
        gnome-shell     3.12 ?
Message-ID:
        <CAOb3iugKRdN7MH7outx8TahfAwHPGstfjFQk6w5ACHk84Ps-iw mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

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, ?? 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.



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