Re: GNOME Shell and system extensions being part of a mode

[Jason DeRose <list derose io>]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017, at 10:02 AM, Didier Roche wrote:

How come you are creating this breaking situation? Do you mind expanding on this?

1) Switch to Vanilla Gnome session. 2) Receive update notification for system-provided extension and take action, updating it via e.g.o. 3) Switch to Ubuntu session and have new unsupported version of extension instead of ubuntu version.

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017, at 10:02 AM, Didier Roche wrote:

This is currently what we have done by changing the extension ID. However, as stated in my first blog post, there is the issue that potentially people will register the same name on extensions.gnome.org and own it. Or you can upload an empty extension which is just a hack…

Also, I note that you will end up with "staled" extension as you meant, so I don't see how this is better than the first proposal? What does it fix that the proposal doesn't?

If you were to upload the extension to e.g.o, why would you have to upload an empty extension and can't just maintain the extension there? Do they not provide any value to users of other distros?

Basically what I was proposing was that when the extensions are installed that they are namespaced somehow. So intead of:

<path>/extensions/TopIcons phocean net

There would be(some variation of):

<path>/extensions/ubuntu:TopIcons phocean net

<path>/extension/ego:TopIcons phocean net

<path>/extension/github:TopIcons phocean net

Tweak tool would show all three extensions with their metadata version and namespace and the user (or session) could enable their desired version, and e.g.o could show only extensions installed via itself. I believe this would solve the underlying problem of competing delivery systems rather than just solving this specific problem affecting users casual users of default ubuntu only.

It's not really clear to me if you are proposing completely blocking users from updating even if they explicitly wish to (and if so, why?) or you simply want to omit them from showing an update indicator within e.g.o and updating without realizing this is an unsupported version. But, perhaps my suggestion can be simplified by simply having e.g.o ignore the system extensions, or differentiate them from user-installed extensions somehow? I am pretty sure that the chrome-gnome-shell notifier already does ignore them.

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017, at 10:03 AM, Jan Niklas Hasse wrote:

He can use the vanilla GNOME session then.

How would this be communicated to the user? The vanilla gnome session isn't even installed out-of-the-box with Ubuntu 17.10. The only thing the user knows to try is disabling from Tweak tool and then the slider does nothing. In the user's opinion, Gnome Tweak Tool just appears to be broken. 

https://askubuntu.com/questions/966795/confused-on-the-new-tray-icon-and-dock-in-ubuntu-17-10-gnome

https://askubuntu.com/questions/967175/disabling-the-gnome-dock-after-installing-dash-to-panel

https://askubuntu.com/questions/968325/remove-second-panel-when-using-dash-to-panel-in-17-10

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2370670