Re: Unexpected behaviour with multiple instances of meld

[Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>]

On 8 June 2015 at 09:34, Peter Williams <pwil3058 gmail com> wrote:
> 1. if I launch a new instance of meld while I have a running copy
> minimised/iconified, the minimised instance gets raised.
>
> 2. if the original instance was on a different workspace to the one I was
> working on I get shifted to that workspace (which can be a little
> disorientating).

So these first two are definitely not intended behaviour. I think
we're just getting our window activation wrong in the instance
lifecycle, and so raising the primary instance when we mean to be
raising the secondary. This may already be fixed in a branch... I'll
have to check.

Either way, could you please file a bug?

> 3. if I tick the "visible on all workspaces" option in an instances window
> management options (in an attempt to cope with issue 2 above) it doesn't
> play nicely e.g. it only shows up on another workspace if it was maximised
> when I changed workspaces.  Other programs do not exhibit this behaviour
> including ones I have written myself that have nothing special in their
> implementation to achieve this.

This is just weird. I'm sorry, but I don't have any guidance here. It
may be an odd interaction between GtkApplication and your window
manager? but we certainly don't do anything strange in Meld itself.

> I realize that other users probably use meld in different ways to me and
> that this coupling between instance probably suits their work practices but
> I was wondering if it would be possible to have an option that turns it off
> to allow launching of independent instances?

Not really, no. We're using GtkApplication for instance handling, and
adding anything else is just way too complicated. However, as far as
I'm concerned the problems you've described are just straight-up bugs
and we don't need to disable single-instance stuff to fix them.

cheers,
Kai