Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
I am sorry for the late proposal, but I feel its important to put forward my views on extension management. This is regarding the extension system. A 'main' method to be called when the extension is loaded is a simple way to inject code to the existing shell. What about un-doing certain changes with out having to reload the shell? If the developer of the extension knows say ,how to add a button to the panel. He/she will definitely know how to revert it back. What I am proposing is to add an additional method say unload in the structure of extension.js (optional only). If the method is found, the extension is eligible to unload dynamically with out Alt+f2 r . The extensions listed in looking glass can now have additional method of load/unload based on whether the extension comes with one. I am not sure if this is planned already. It is just one step forward for having a central extension manager. It may not happen now but It would be good to have one. extensionModule.main(meta); is for loading the extension thanks -- vamsi On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Giovanni Campagna scampa.giova...@gmail.com wrote: This is the last day for feature proposals, but unfortunately I've been very busy lately and didn't have time to write it down formally. And actually, mine is more a question than a proposal: what are planning to do with additional functionality that is provided as plugins? I believe there are two specific questions we need to answer on this topic. The first one is technical, and related to distribution of code. Some of Core modules have related external modules that provide extensions, like eog-plugins, gedit-plugins, epiphany-extensions, gnome-shell-extensions, gnome-applets. First of all, should those modules be provided as tarballs? Last time I asked this for gnome-shell-extensions, I was answered no, because distributions should not provided packages of those. Nevertheless, all them appear packaged in most common distros, which makes that point moot, and actually increases the work required by packagers. Plus having git be the primary way to distribute code makes it difficult to mark buildable/usable release (both for distro packages and for manual building), resulting for example in people using g-s-extensions master with released (incompatible) gnome-shell. More on that: should those modules be part of the Core as well? On the one hand, they provide functionality that is additional to Core, and often against accepted design. On the other hand, they're often packaged, installed and used together with core modules, as well as having the same developers/maintainers. A different issue is then UI. Some time ago it was proposed to introduce addons.gnome.org, skip the (rpm/deb) packaging completely and just instruct users to go, download the plugin and install it. This has the problem that the plugin must be in an installable format (xpi?), not just a random python/js file to drop in .local/share (or even worse, an autotools tarball). I think we can solve this in the same way we're going to deal with Gnome Apps, by leveraging and extending PackageKit (with native repo metadata), meaning that users will be able to browse through extensions in gpk-application (or an improved software center-like app) or in the same UI they currently use for enabling/disabling them, and get them installed automatically from the repository. This would leave the problem of enabling third parties to provide plugins, but I believe it has to be solved at the distro level, if they want to have some kind of AppStore for unsupported externally-provided (often non-free) desktop apps. I'm looking forwards to see your opinions on these issues and I'm ready to help with whatever work (at the UI/platform/releng level) is needed to get a better plugin experience in GNOME 3.2 Giovanni ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Vamsi Krishna Brahmajosyula vamsikrishna.brahmajosy...@gmail.com wrote: I am sorry for the late proposal, but I feel its important to put forward my views on extension management. This is regarding the extension system. A 'main' method to be called when the extension is loaded is a simple way to inject code to the existing shell. What about un-doing certain changes with out having to reload the shell? If the developer of the extension knows say ,how to add a button to the panel. He/she will definitely know how to revert it back. What I am proposing is to add an additional method say unload in the structure of extension.js (optional only). If the method is found, the extension is eligible to unload dynamically with out Alt+f2 r . The extensions listed in looking glass can now have additional method of load/unload based on whether the extension comes with one. I am not sure if this is planned already. It is just one step forward for having a central extension manager. It may not happen now but It would be good to have one. extensionModule.main(meta); is for loading the extension sorry I have hit the send button too soon extensionModule.unload(meta); is for unloading the extension please send your opinions. thanks -- vamsi On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Giovanni Campagna scampa.giova...@gmail.com wrote: This is the last day for feature proposals, but unfortunately I've been very busy lately and didn't have time to write it down formally. And actually, mine is more a question than a proposal: what are planning to do with additional functionality that is provided as plugins? I believe there are two specific questions we need to answer on this topic. The first one is technical, and related to distribution of code. Some of Core modules have related external modules that provide extensions, like eog-plugins, gedit-plugins, epiphany-extensions, gnome-shell-extensions, gnome-applets. First of all, should those modules be provided as tarballs? Last time I asked this for gnome-shell-extensions, I was answered no, because distributions should not provided packages of those. Nevertheless, all them appear packaged in most common distros, which makes that point moot, and actually increases the work required by packagers. Plus having git be the primary way to distribute code makes it difficult to mark buildable/usable release (both for distro packages and for manual building), resulting for example in people using g-s-extensions master with released (incompatible) gnome-shell. More on that: should those modules be part of the Core as well? On the one hand, they provide functionality that is additional to Core, and often against accepted design. On the other hand, they're often packaged, installed and used together with core modules, as well as having the same developers/maintainers. A different issue is then UI. Some time ago it was proposed to introduce addons.gnome.org, skip the (rpm/deb) packaging completely and just instruct users to go, download the plugin and install it. This has the problem that the plugin must be in an installable format (xpi?), not just a random python/js file to drop in .local/share (or even worse, an autotools tarball). I think we can solve this in the same way we're going to deal with Gnome Apps, by leveraging and extending PackageKit (with native repo metadata), meaning that users will be able to browse through extensions in gpk-application (or an improved software center-like app) or in the same UI they currently use for enabling/disabling them, and get them installed automatically from the repository. This would leave the problem of enabling third parties to provide plugins, but I believe it has to be solved at the distro level, if they want to have some kind of AppStore for unsupported externally-provided (often non-free) desktop apps. I'm looking forwards to see your opinions on these issues and I'm ready to help with whatever work (at the UI/platform/releng level) is needed to get a better plugin experience in GNOME 3.2 Giovanni ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 6:52 AM, Giovanni Campagna scampa.giova...@gmail.com wrote: First of all, should those modules be provided as tarballs? Last time I asked this for gnome-shell-extensions, I was answered no, because distributions should not provided packages of those. Nevertheless, all them appear packaged in most common distros, which makes that point moot, and actually increases the work required by packagers. Plus having Right, and I think this is primarily because they want to satisfy people who still prefer the GNOME 2 experience and have trouble coping with the changes. Some of the extensions put functionality back or to fix issues such has suspend that users do not seem to understand the change as such. We made extensions hard to get to, thus it got packaged for easy dissemination. git be the primary way to distribute code makes it difficult to mark buildable/usable release (both for distro packages and for manual building), resulting for example in people using g-s-extensions master with released (incompatible) gnome-shell. It also makes GNOME somewhat unstable.. More on that: should those modules be part of the Core as well? On the one hand, they provide functionality that is additional to Core, and often against accepted design. On the other hand, they're often packaged, installed and used together with core modules, as well as having the same developers/maintainers. Owen and Jon and module maintainers are probably the right one to answer this one.. A different issue is then UI. Some time ago it was proposed to introduce addons.gnome.org, skip the (rpm/deb) packaging completely and just instruct users to go, download the plugin and install it. I personally prefer this. The reasoning is that we are able to control the experience better. Extensions can create instability in GNOME 3 and thus we don't want GNOME 3 to be blamed for instability due to the extensions installed. addons would at least let us add a disclaimer and also provide us with a way to increase the value and recognizably of our brand. I don't know how easy it would be to add xpi like features.. I reckon not that too hard given the use of mozilla javascript. I think we can solve this in the same way we're going to deal with Gnome Apps, by leveraging and extending PackageKit (with native repo metadata), meaning that users will be able to browse through extensions in gpk-application (or an improved software center-like app) or in the same UI they currently use for enabling/disabling them, and get them installed automatically from the repository. That's a possibility as well, but the experience would not be consistent. For instance, person on one distro would not have the same set of extensions as another person. It might also lead to distros making unique extensions only through their distro. Ideally, we'd like the same set of extensions available on all distros. One measure could be that addons.gnome.org could be a software channel for package kit but using xpi if package kit could be extended to use it. This would leave the problem of enabling third parties to provide plugins, but I believe it has to be solved at the distro level, if they want to have some kind of AppStore for unsupported externally-provided (often non-free) desktop apps. We could use the same set up as PPAs. Again we need to be careful to communicate to end users that adding something not official is subject to making their desktop unstable. I'm looking forwards to see your opinions on these issues and I'm ready to help with whatever work (at the UI/platform/releng level) is needed to get a better plugin experience in GNOME 3.2 Hope, my comments were helpful. sri ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 15:52 +0200, Giovanni Campagna wrote: A different issue is then UI. Some time ago it was proposed to introduce addons.gnome.org, skip the (rpm/deb) packaging completely and just instruct users to go, download the plugin and install it. This has the problem that the plugin must be in an installable format (xpi?), not just a random python/js file to drop in .local/share (or even worse, an autotools tarball). I'm not sure we need to take extensions into account which do stuff that requires more than the metadata/js/css files - I'd consider extensions already as warranty-breaking, and even more so if it requires compilation/installation outside ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/foo. So I'd imagine something simple as a gzipped tarball with a custom extension (gsx == GNOME Shell extension?) which is distributed on addons.gnome.org - then we can have a dedicated app (Desktop Extension Manager?) registered as MIME handler to deal with installation/removal/disabling/... . Florian ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
Il giorno lun, 09/05/2011 alle 19.44 +0530, Vamsi Krishna Brahmajosyula ha scritto: I am sorry for the late proposal, but I feel its important to put forward my views on extension management. This is regarding the extension system. A 'main' method to be called when the extension is loaded is a simple way to inject code to the existing shell. What about un-doing certain changes with out having to reload the shell? If the developer of the extension knows say ,how to add a button to the panel. He/she will definitely know how to revert it back. What I am proposing is to add an additional method say unload in the structure of extension.js (optional only). If the method is found, the extension is eligible to unload dynamically with out Alt +f2 r . The extensions listed in looking glass can now have additional method of load/unload based on whether the extension comes with one. I am not sure if this is planned already. This is not a platform-wide feature, it affects just one module. And since it is definitely worth-while, file a bug and someone (which could be me) will work on it. It is just one step forward for having a central extension manager. It may not happen now but It would be good to have one. extensionModule.main(meta); is for loading the extension thanks -- vamsi On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Giovanni Campagna scampa.giova...@gmail.com wrote: This is the last day for feature proposals, but unfortunately I've been very busy lately and didn't have time to write it down formally. And actually, mine is more a question than a proposal: what are planning to do with additional functionality that is provided as plugins? I believe there are two specific questions we need to answer on this topic. The first one is technical, and related to distribution of code. Some of Core modules have related external modules that provide extensions, like eog-plugins, gedit-plugins, epiphany-extensions, gnome-shell-extensions, gnome-applets. First of all, should those modules be provided as tarballs? Last time I asked this for gnome-shell-extensions, I was answered no, because distributions should not provided packages of those. Nevertheless, all them appear packaged in most common distros, which makes that point moot, and actually increases the work required by packagers. Plus having git be the primary way to distribute code makes it difficult to mark buildable/usable release (both for distro packages and for manual building), resulting for example in people using g-s-extensions master with released (incompatible) gnome-shell. More on that: should those modules be part of the Core as well? On the one hand, they provide functionality that is additional to Core, and often against accepted design. On the other hand, they're often packaged, installed and used together with core modules, as well as having the same developers/maintainers. A different issue is then UI. Some time ago it was proposed to introduce addons.gnome.org, skip the (rpm/deb) packaging completely and just instruct users to go, download the plugin and install it. This has the problem that the plugin must be in an installable format (xpi?), not just a random python/js file to drop in .local/share (or even worse, an autotools tarball). I think we can solve this in the same way we're going to deal with Gnome Apps, by leveraging and extending PackageKit (with native repo metadata), meaning that users will be able to browse through extensions in gpk-application (or an improved software center-like app) or in the same UI they currently use for enabling/disabling them, and get them installed automatically from the repository. This would leave the problem of enabling third parties to provide plugins, but I believe it has to be solved at the distro level, if they want to have some kind of AppStore for unsupported externally-provided (often non-free) desktop apps. I'm looking forwards to see your opinions on these issues and I'm ready to help with whatever work (at the UI/platform/releng level) is needed to get a better plugin experience in GNOME 3.2 Giovanni ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:12 PM, Giovanni Campagna scampa.giova...@gmail.com wrote: Il giorno lun, 09/05/2011 alle 19.44 +0530, Vamsi Krishna Brahmajosyula ha scritto: I am sorry for the late proposal, but I feel its important to put forward my views on extension management. This is regarding the extension system. A 'main' method to be called when the extension is loaded is a simple way to inject code to the existing shell. What about un-doing certain changes with out having to reload the shell? If the developer of the extension knows say ,how to add a button to the panel. He/she will definitely know how to revert it back. What I am proposing is to add an additional method say unload in the structure of extension.js (optional only). If the method is found, the extension is eligible to unload dynamically with out Alt +f2 r . The extensions listed in looking glass can now have additional method of load/unload based on whether the extension comes with one. I am not sure if this is planned already. This is not a platform-wide feature, it affects just one module. And since it is definitely worth-while, file a bug and someone (which could be me) will work on it. Ok, I will file a bug on that. I would like to work on that as well. Will try to get patches on looking glass ( ability to enable/disable an extension) and extensionSystem(to identify and call the unload method when required) . thanks It is just one step forward for having a central extension manager. It may not happen now but It would be good to have one. extensionModule.main(meta); is for loading the extension thanks -- vamsi On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Giovanni Campagna scampa.giova...@gmail.com wrote: This is the last day for feature proposals, but unfortunately I've been very busy lately and didn't have time to write it down formally. And actually, mine is more a question than a proposal: what are planning to do with additional functionality that is provided as plugins? I believe there are two specific questions we need to answer on this topic. The first one is technical, and related to distribution of code. Some of Core modules have related external modules that provide extensions, like eog-plugins, gedit-plugins, epiphany-extensions, gnome-shell-extensions, gnome-applets. First of all, should those modules be provided as tarballs? Last time I asked this for gnome-shell-extensions, I was answered no, because distributions should not provided packages of those. Nevertheless, all them appear packaged in most common distros, which makes that point moot, and actually increases the work required by packagers. Plus having git be the primary way to distribute code makes it difficult to mark buildable/usable release (both for distro packages and for manual building), resulting for example in people using g-s-extensions master with released (incompatible) gnome-shell. More on that: should those modules be part of the Core as well? On the one hand, they provide functionality that is additional to Core, and often against accepted design. On the other hand, they're often packaged, installed and used together with core modules, as well as having the same developers/maintainers. A different issue is then UI. Some time ago it was proposed to introduce addons.gnome.org, skip the (rpm/deb) packaging completely and just instruct users to go, download the plugin and install it. This has the problem that the plugin must be in an installable format (xpi?), not just a random python/js file to drop in .local/share (or even worse, an autotools tarball). I think we can solve this in the same way we're going to deal with Gnome Apps, by leveraging and extending PackageKit (with native repo metadata), meaning that users will be able to browse through extensions in gpk-application (or an improved software center-like app) or in the same UI they currently use for enabling/disabling them, and get them installed automatically from the repository. This would leave the problem of enabling third parties to provide plugins, but I believe it has to be solved at the distro level, if they want to have some kind of AppStore for unsupported externally-provided (often non-free) desktop apps. I'm
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
Il giorno lun, 09/05/2011 alle 17.13 +0200, Florian Müllner ha scritto: On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 15:52 +0200, Giovanni Campagna wrote: A different issue is then UI. Some time ago it was proposed to introduce addons.gnome.org, skip the (rpm/deb) packaging completely and just instruct users to go, download the plugin and install it. This has the problem that the plugin must be in an installable format (xpi?), not just a random python/js file to drop in .local/share (or even worse, an autotools tarball). I'm not sure we need to take extensions into account which do stuff that requires more than the metadata/js/css files - I'd consider extensions already as warranty-breaking, and even more so if it requires compilation/installation outside ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/foo. So I'd imagine something simple as a gzipped tarball with a custom extension (gsx == GNOME Shell extension?) which is distributed on addons.gnome.org - then we can have a dedicated app (Desktop Extension Manager?) registered as MIME handler to deal with installation/removal/disabling/... . So .gsx (application/vnd.gnome.shell-extension) for the Shell, .gdp (application/vnd.gnome.gedit-plugin) for Gedit, .epe (application/vnd.gnome.epiphany-extension) for Ephiphany, etc.? How would it integrate with, for example, libpeas? Or a more generic .plugin.tar.xz, and the .plugin contained in it would reference Eog / Rhythmbox? What format for the container? .tar.xz, even if the extension is different? Or a big compressed xml file bundling metadata and code? What about more complex extensions, like libsocialweb providers or gimp filters? Should they go through the traditional distro channels? Giovanni signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
Le lundi 09 mai 2011 à 17:13 +0200, Florian Müllner a écrit : So I'd imagine something simple as a gzipped tarball with a custom extension (gsx == GNOME Shell extension?) which is distributed on addons.gnome.org - then we can have a dedicated app (Desktop Extension Manager?) registered as MIME handler to deal with installation/removal/disabling/... . And upgrade. I think an important part is to allow people to get up-to-date versions of their extensions at the same time as they update their system packages. What should we do e.g. when people upgrade to GNOME 3.2 and their extensions are no longer compatible with the API? Ideally IMHO, new versions of extensions would be downloaded from addons.gnome.org when the system packages are upgraded. But if they are installed per-user, that has to be done per-user too, i.e. on first login after upgrade... I kind of hate this idea: when all apps are doing this, users are getting random dialogs about upgrades they don't understand. Though I guess that's OK if there's a single extension manager for GNOME (Shell, gedit, Epiphany...) - but don't forget Firefox is also doing this, and other third-party apps might too. Cheers ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 17:50 +0200, Giovanni Campagna wrote: So .gsx (application/vnd.gnome.shell-extension) for the Shell, .gdp (application/vnd.gnome.gedit-plugin) for Gedit, .epe (application/vnd.gnome.epiphany-extension) for Ephiphany, etc.? How would it integrate with, for example, libpeas? No, I was only talking about GNOME Shell. I don't know if there are any plans for application extensions to go for the web route as well, but if they do I don't see how they'd need a dedicated UI - all applications you mention already provide UI for extension management, it'd seem more natural to extend those as necessary (of course that doesn't mean that code couldn't be shared between those applications). GNOME Shell is a bit special in that it should not have a brand of its own (e.g. users shouldn't need to know that they are running gnome-shell any more than they needed to know they were running gnome-panel +metacity). It's basically the desktop chrome of GNOME 3 - which makes for a horrible brand :-) For extensions, this also means that there's no good place for an UI yet - we don't (and shouldn't) have any GNOME Shell Settings. Looking glass is a developer tool, I don't think it is where we expect users to manage extensions. Exposing extensions in the overview (as suggested at some point) is completely out of the question. Hence my suggestion to have a dedicated application to manage desktop extensions. Florian ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: Plugins, modules and extensions
On 05/09/2011 03:52 PM, Giovanni Campagna wrote: I'm looking forwards to see your opinions on these issues and I'm ready to help with whatever work (at the UI/platform/releng level) is needed to get a better plugin experience in GNOME 3.2 For your information, there is currently a Summer of Code project by Garett Regier meant to add plugin sources support to libpeas. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
