More GNOME Shell Extensions coming to Fedora

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

You might be interested in these

http://fabian-affolter.ch/blog/index...ons-for-fedora

[Dan]

Hmmm. Took that forever to load, and it wasn't any too stable when it did.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

Not very specific I am afraid. In any case, bug reports should be in bugzilla :-)

[Dan]

I was referring to the website. Bugzilla probably won't help much with that. The poor guy's server may be getting hammered aboiut now. <....>

[fpmurphy]

I do not mean to be the elephant in the room here but Fedora should not be packaging
and making any GNOME Shell extensions available for a number of reasons including the
following:

- Fedora and other distributions package GNOME Shell extensions so that they are
installed in the GLOBAL extension directory, i.e. /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions
and not in the PER USER extension directory, i.e. ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions.

This means that on a multi-user system the extension is foisted upon everybody. It
should nearly always be a per user choice, as with Firefox add-ons, as to either they
wish to use a GNOME Shell extension or not. It is safer and more user friendly this
way.

Furthermore, if the extension has a major bug, everybody's GNOME Shell is broken.
Look at the mess caused by the packaging of the user-theme extension for GLOBAL
installation. Not really the packagers fault because he was not the developer of this
particular extension. But the packaging of it so that it was really available for
download via yum from the official Fedora repositories lead to the widespread
GNOME Shell styling issues.

- There is absolutely no need to package shell extensions. This is simply wrong. Such
packaging provides no added value to a user and, in fact, gives the impression that
the extension is somehow QA'ed and "blessed" by Fedora when in fact this is not the
case. It also interferes with the ability of an extension developer to promulgate
updates to the extension and bug fixes in a timely manner.

The current thinking among extension developers is that an extensions website
should be developed along the likes of add-ons.mozilla.org, and that extensions
should be simply made available as a gzipped tarball which a user downloads either
directly or though an interface in the GNOME Shell.

While I have mentioned Fedora here, all of the above also applies to other distributions
that are packaging GNOME Shell extensions.

[mightyvoid]

Perhaps this could be resolved by a configuration applet? For instance the app lists extensions in ~/.local/ and /usr/share with options to enable each extension, it then creates a per-user config file and this determines what extensions are loaded for each user?

I might have a go at coding this provided I can find sufficient resources, my coding skills outside of the web are modest at best but considering the extensions i have used thus far use a mix of json and css I feel confident I can get something going...

fpmurphy, you've done some great extensions, any advice?

[jtfolden]

Originally Posted by fpmurphy

- There is absolutely no need to package shell extensions. This is simply wrong. Such
packaging provides no added value to a user and, in fact, gives the impression that
the extension is somehow QA'ed and "blessed" by Fedora when in fact this is not the
case. It also interferes with the ability of an extension developer to promulgate
updates to the extension and bug fixes in a timely manner.

Do extensions have some way of updating themselves currently? ... or displaying a notice that an update is available? If so, I wasn't aware of this, and if not then it can't really be used as an argument against the promulgation of updates via repositories. Having to manually go from website to website to check for possible updates of each extensions is tedious and certainly not something the average user is going to remember to do (or know to do when there's no update notification).

Right now, having to deal with the command line and/or GIT to install an extension (and there are more than a few like this) seems very wrong, as well. I'd much rather see them delivered via a distro's normal software mechanisms (and presumably they would see updates that way, as well) until there's something actually in place and working that could install extensions from a GUI-based app or a one-click install from some sort of extensions website. ...and judging by the recent discussion on the gnome-shell mailing list, I'm having a hard time seeing the above being endorsed any time soon.

---

BTW, I'd love to see the Weather extension packaged up for easy install in F15:
https://github.com/simon04/gnome-she...ension-weather

[mightyvoid]

Originally Posted by jtfolden

Do extensions have some way of updating themselves currently? ... or displaying a notice that an update is available? If so, I wasn't aware of this, and if not then it can't really be used as an argument against the promulgation of updates via repositories. Having to manually go from website to website to check for possible updates of each extensions is tedious and certainly not something the average user is going to remember to do (or know to do when there's no update notification).

Right now, having to deal with the command line and/or GIT to install an extension (and there are more than a few like this) seems very wrong, as well. I'd much rather see them delivered via a distro's normal software mechanisms (and presumably they would see updates that way, as well) until there's something actually in place and working that could install extensions from a GUI-based app or a one-click install from some sort of extensions website. ...and judging by the recent discussion on the gnome-shell mailing list, I'm having a hard time seeing the above being endorsed any time soon.

I agree entirely with this reasoning.

A per-user config file to enable packaged extensions seems like it would address murphy's concerns while at the same time reaping the benefits of yum packages and still alow users to use unpackaged extensions on a per-user basis by placing the extensions in their ~/.local/share drectories - A GUI to deal with the config file under system settings (or as an extension it's self) would also be possible.

I'm keen to make this happen if anyone else would offer some help.

[fpmurphy]

Do extensions have some way of updating themselves currently? ... or displaying a notice that an update is available? If so, I wasn't aware of this, and if not then it can't really be used as an argument against the promulgation of updates via repositories.

No, extensions do not have some way of updating themselves at the moment. A notification that a new version of an extension is available is very do-able. I do not think that extensions should automatically update themselves however - user interaction should always be required in order to maintain a stable GNOME Shell.

Having to manually go from website to website to check for possible updates of each extensions is tedious and certainly not something the average user is going to remember to do (or know to do when there's no update notification).

Why would one have to go manually from website to website if there is a central place to view details about, read reviews and ratings and download the extension or theme? Think addons.mozilla.org, wordpress plugins, Perl CPAN, etc.

---------- Post added at 10:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:05 AM ----------

I'd much rather see them delivered via a distro's normal software mechanisms (and presumably they would see updates that way, as well) until there's something actually in place and working that could install extensions from a GUI-based app or a one-click install from some sort of extensions website.

I understand your reasoning but please understand the problem from an extension developers point of view.

I have written many extensions of one type or another up to now. Some of these were proof of concept extensions, i.e. pathfinders, pushing the boundaries of knowledge regarding shell extensions. Yet, some are making their way into distributions via packagers without anybody ensuring that they work in harmony with other extensions, were ever intended for global install, or even work on a particular version of GNOME Shell. This mess cannot easily be fixed by me. Packagers do their own thing - I have only even been asked once (and that was Rahul) if it were OK to include an extension of mine in a distribution.

For example, it has been known for many months that the user-theme extension caused problems with extension CSS (due to a bug in GNOME shell) but has Fedora removed the package? No. Instead users end up having to figure out the fix by coming to this forum or elsewhere. Can a fix be easily propagated? Again no because packagers do their own thing, work at their own pace and are subject to their distributions policies regarding updates, etc.

Not having extensions distributed by Linux distributions would eliminate this mess and ensure that fixes to extensions were made available to users in a timely fashion. Alternatively, as with Perl packages, only well proven and time-tested extensions should be packaged and made available by a distribution. So far, no extension meets that criteria. The GNOME Shell is simply too new.

[jtfolden]

Originally Posted by fpmurphy

No, extensions do not have some way of updating themselves at the moment. A notification that a new version of an extension is available is very do-able. I do not think that extensions should automatically update themselves however - user interaction should always be required in order to maintain a stable GNOME Shell.

Automatically update? No. ...but if extensions were not to be packaged by the distro then there *needs* to be a mechanism in place where the user is automatically notified about updates without having to browse a website and manually check for him/herself.

Why would one have to go manually from website to website if there is a central place to view details about, read reviews and ratings and download the extension or theme? Think addons.mozilla.org, wordpress plugins, Perl CPAN, etc.
<snip>
Not having extensions distributed by Linux distributions would eliminate this mess and ensure that fixes to extensions were made available to users in a timely fashion.

...but that kind of site doesn't currently exist, isn't even in heavy development to my knowledge, and I'd be half-way surprised if an officially endorsed "extensions.gnome.org" popped up within the next 6 months in a workable state. Just in the last week or two, I've seen measurable pushback for this sort of thing on the Gnome mailing lists - everything from not having a site at all because it would be "facilitating the unrestricted use of extensions and themes by end users"[1], to having a site but pushing guidelines that must be followed in order to have an extensions listed (such as no themes, no changes to the top bar. [2] ).

There's, also, the issue that there's not a single user-friendly way to install extensions once you step outside of package management right now. A user should never have to deal with the following just to install an extension:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

...not to mention having to wonder how to remove it later, if need be.

So, I'm not sure I agree that existing, workable solutions should be completely avoided on the basis that something better might come down the pipe someway, somehow and at some undetermined time. Perhaps, extensions developers should clearly label extensions that they feel are not up to snuff for packagers or request that particular packages be accompanied by a note of warning?

Don't get me wrong, it would be great if we had a central, unified app or website to deal with this but since there's no hard timeline, or even plan, on something like that yet I think we need to make the best of the distribution avenues available.

John

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome.../msg00110.html
[2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome.../msg00117.html

(...and on a complete side note, while I generally love what the devs have done with Gnome 3 and Gnome-Shell, I absolutely abhor the idea that a user shouldn't be able to modify their desktop as they see fit once they have it installed, especially under the questionable complaint that it "decreases [Gnome's] brand presence".)

[RahulSundaram]

Originally Posted by fpmurphy

I do not mean to be the elephant in the room here but Fedora should not be packaging .

I obvious disagree.

Your claims about GNOME Shell extensions apply to the early Firefox extensions as well or even the language modules and as you can see, the popular Firefox extensions got packaged and is used by distros. There are good reasons to package them. For instance, system wide installation of extensions and the ability to manage them with the regular RPM deploying and update mechanisms like yum and kickstart are very useful in some cases especially when dealing with multiple systems that is centrally managed like office workstations. Having a per user way of doing things is useful in other cases like personal desktops. Both have their place.

As to GNOME providing a website, they are free to do that and I encourage it but I am not positive there is any consensus yet and the current consensus would have been to treat extensions as merely a prototyping mechanism if not for the fact that distros are already packaging them.

Yes, there will be niggles, some bugs and things to sort out as we go forward but these are early days and this is very much expected and yes GNOME should provide a easy way to disable the extensions during login or when it throws a generic option, also offer a way to do that right in the error dialog box. Think Firefox safe mode.