After an evaluation, GNOME has moved from Bugzilla to GitLab. Learn more about GitLab.
No new issues can be reported in GNOME Bugzilla anymore.
To report an issue in a GNOME project, go to GNOME GitLab.
Do not go to GNOME Gitlab for: Bluefish, Doxygen, GnuCash, GStreamer, java-gnome, LDTP, NetworkManager, Tomboy.
Bug 685744 - list set of supported extensions
list set of supported extensions
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: general
Classification: Other
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Unknown User
Unknown User
Depends on: 688913 689275 689285 689300 689304 689305 689308 689358 689738 689739 689763 689781 691353 692027 692030 692527
Blocks: fallback
 
 
Reported: 2012-10-08 19:12 UTC by Colin Walters
Modified: 2016-11-11 14:50 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Colin Walters 2012-10-08 19:12:02 UTC
As part of dropping fallback mode.
Comment 1 Matthias Clasen 2012-11-04 19:24:31 UTC
I don't think 'supported' is a term we really want to use here. From what I recall, this is about the second group of fallback mode users - those that choose fallback mode voluntarily because they don't like the new ux. 

So, what we want to do is tell them something like: 

We're sorry that GNOME 3 does not work perfectly for you - but thankfully, gnome-shell is extensible. If you like the GNOME 2 user experience better, there are a number of extensions that you can try to make GNOME 3 work better for you:
1) ...
2) ...
3) ...
Comment 2 Jeremy Bicha 2012-11-05 18:12:11 UTC
I think we really do want a list of supported extensions for a GNOME2-ish experience. By "supported", I mean that if somebody does something that breaks an extension on the list, that somebody needs to either fix the extension or find someone to do that. An example would be if someone overhauls the way "places" work, then they need to make sure the "places status indicator" still works.

Some candidates
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-menu/
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/8/places-status-indicator/
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/19/user-themes/ (should just be in core)

Either https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/ or 
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/17/dock/ (one is on the left and one is on the right; they should probably have a setting to configure that)

Maybe some of the Frippery extensions (which apparently haven't been updated for 3.6 yet, which is an example of why we need to do a better job of supporting some core extensions...unless we really just want people to use Mate or Cinnamon or XFCE).

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2/move-clock/
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/3/bottom-panel/
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4/panel-favorites/
Comment 3 Matthias Clasen 2012-11-05 20:05:13 UTC
> I think we really do want a list of supported extensions for a GNOME2-ish
> experience. By "supported", I mean that if somebody does something that breaks
> an extension on the list, that somebody needs to either fix the extension or
> find someone to do that. 

Unless you are signing up to be that somebody, that doesn't really improve the situation compared to shipping a bunch of unmaintained gnome2 modules...
Comment 4 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2012-11-05 20:59:29 UTC
I'm fine with maintaining some set of extensions, but I think there's more work to be done. We don't really have a safe way for developers to develop and test before the release is made, and usually it takes another three or four months from GNOME release to distro release.

I think that solving this issue would help quite a big deal, and this is probably what Frippery is waiting on, but it's a hard issue. If somebody wants me to maintain X extension and ensure that it's up to date, I'd be happy to do it.
Comment 5 Giovanni Campagna 2012-11-05 21:07:10 UTC
FWIW, I support the aforementioned extensions "apps-menu", "places-menu", "alternate-tab" and "user-theme", to the extent of making sure that they work with each new shell release, and occasionally fixing bugs on them.
I also rewrote places-menu to look like the new nautilus place sidebar for 3.6.
On the other hand, I dropped dock starting with 3.7.1, for lack of time and interests, after nobody showed up in the mailing list.

I believe that user-theme specifically makes sense in core shell, for the same reasons we support theming in gtk and mutter.
Additionally, move-clock and remove-accessibility could be obsoleted by bug 681528.
Comment 6 Matthias Clasen 2012-11-20 19:47:33 UTC
To update the wider audience; we've had some discussions about this.

The current plan is as follows:

We will use the gnome-shell-extensions repository for this work. We
want to do tarball releases of this to go along with GNOME releases
("supported"), and a repository makes that much easier.
The gnome-shell-extensions already has the build machinery in place
to do releases (and Giovanni is in fact, doing regular releases).

The set of supported extensions will not include everything that is
currently in the repository. We are thinking of

- taskbar
- minimize/maximize buttons
- classic alt-tab
- main menu

Giovanni already added a --classic-mode build switch in the 3.7.2
release, which allows building a subset of extensions.

We haven't made a final decision yet on the best way to turn these on
as a group. Once that has been settled, we will look at exposing
that switch in the UI, possibly in gnome-tweak-tool.
Comment 7 John Stowers 2012-11-21 16:11:24 UTC
What about adding the user-theme extension to that list?
Comment 8 Reuben Thomas 2012-11-21 18:20:55 UTC
I'd just like to add my hearty encouragement to this effort. Having to spend hours searching for updated extensions, and often fixing them, with each release has made me consider giving up on GNOME 3: there are some legacy behaviours that apps I rely on can't live without, and some new UI features I really don't want.

Anything that eases transition from one release to the next in future is a winner, and it looks as though the key extensions will mostly be supported by this. The one remaining one I don't see which is frequently a bone of contention is something like TopIcons:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/495/topicons/
Comment 9 Hammer Attila 2012-11-22 11:53:37 UTC
The main-menu extension future will be have a keyboard shortcut to present Applications, Places and system menu for example? This is important for a11y if an user want using the traditional classic categorized main menus to launch applications. Or I missunderstand this extension purpose? For example, the ALT+F1 keystroke is good if not need conflicting the present owerview screen.
Now I using my Ubuntu 12.04 with GNOME3 fallback session, but tryed GNOME Shell 3.6 a Fedora 18 alpha live CD with Orca Screen Reader.
Fortunately my notebook built in Intel GMA 3100 video card GNOME Shell 3.6 works good, and very good usable with Orca Screen Reader. Unfortunately because in Ubuntu 12.10 the braille support is not working good (this is a different story), I come back with Ubuntu 12.04.

This future extensions need manual downloading a distribution, or perhaps distro maintainers packaging this extensions? I newer try installing GNOME Shell extensions, so I not known this new mehanishm detailed.
If Ubuntu 13.04 development release Orca screen reader working good again and will be have testing extensions, I welcome help the testing if I have enough free time.

Attila
Comment 10 Felipe Erias Morandeira 2012-11-26 14:50:43 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)
> something like TopIcons:

That is a good suggestion. Speaking as a user, I would like to move status icons and notifications to the top bar, and completely remove the notification bar at the bottom. There are already a bunch of extensions that do similar things, but they still have room for improvement.
Comment 11 John Stowers 2012-12-04 17:38:13 UTC
FWIW read this article

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/12/evernote-linux-client-everpad-available.html

In general parlance, "Now With GNOME Shell Support" basically seems to mean not just using Unity specific API. In this specific example it seems to mean "has a status icon"

So I guess this is a vote for something like TopIcons?

(Dropbox and Skype are the other problems here)
Comment 12 John Stowers 2013-01-27 00:12:31 UTC
Based on this thread

https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/KygiWsQc4Wm

A vote for panel-favorites... (for the terminal pros that like to launch new terminals using the mouse)
Comment 13 Allan Day 2016-11-11 14:37:52 UTC
It's been 4 years since Matthias wrote a proposal for this in comment 6, and I don't see any substantive movement here since then. My impression is that we have a stable arrangement for maintaining extensions.
Comment 14 Debarshi Ray 2016-11-11 14:50:37 UTC
I'd say FIXED, not OBSOLETE, since this is basically what led to gnome-shell's classic mode.