GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 789469
Remove the ability to let a browser initiate the addition of a new account
Last modified: 2018-03-05 12:09:15 UTC
In bug 694313, we enabled browsers to trigger the addition of a new account and passing the cookies over D-Bus to avoid asking for the credentials a second time. The idea was to prompt the user to add her Facebook account in GNOME when the browser detects a log-in. However, it never went beyond the proof-of-concept stage. It's been more than four years and as far as I know, nobody uses this feature. The extra cookie management that's necessary to implement this feature has now exposed us to a WebKitGTK+ bug (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=175265) that hasn't been fixed in a while. It is preventing users from adding multiple accounts backed by the same provider (bug 781005), which can be a pretty important thing. I propose that we drop this feature. We have waited long enough for a proper fix in WebKitGTK+, and the proposed workarounds are pretty abhorrable. It doesn't make sense to endure all this for code that nobody uses.
Created attachment 362246 [details] [review] Revert "online-accounts: Accept requests for account creation on ..."
FWIW, bug 694315 was the gnome-control-center part of the original feature.
Review of attachment 362246 [details] [review]: sure
Comment on attachment 362246 [details] [review] Revert "online-accounts: Accept requests for account creation on ..." Thanks for the review! Pushed to master.
*** Bug 709347 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
> It's been more than four years and as far as I know, nobody uses this feature. That's not completely true. gnome-calendar was using (and it's still does, so I guess gnome-calendar is broken) this feature (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/blob/master/src/gcal-source-dialog.c#L727).
And GNOME To Do as well...
(In reply to Andrea Azzarone from comment #6) > > It's been more than four years and as far as I know, nobody uses this feature. > > That's not completely true. gnome-calendar was using (and it's still does, > so I guess gnome-calendar is broken) this feature > (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/blob/master/src/gcal-source- > dialog.c#L727). It doesn't use the feature that was removed. This bug is about monitoring web browser cookies to pass those to goa, the code you point to is about launching gnome-control-center as a native application.
(In reply to Bastien Nocera from comment #8) > (In reply to Andrea Azzarone from comment #6) > > > It's been more than four years and as far as I know, nobody uses this feature. > > > > That's not completely true. gnome-calendar was using (and it's still does, > > so I guess gnome-calendar is broken) this feature > > (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/blob/master/src/gcal-source- > > dialog.c#L727). > > It doesn't use the feature that was removed. This bug is about monitoring > web browser cookies to pass those to goa, the code you point to is about > launching gnome-control-center as a native application. Yeah but it's using the "add" command. And the "add" command is not available anymore.
(In reply to Andrea Azzarone from comment #9) > Yeah but it's using the "add" command. And the "add" command is not > available anymore. You're right. I'll clone this bug.
Done in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=794012
(In reply to Andrea Azzarone from comment #6) >> It's been more than four years and as far as I know, nobody uses >> this feature. > > That's not completely true. gnome-calendar was using (and it's still does, > so I guess gnome-calendar is broken) this feature > (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/blob/master/src/gcal-source- > dialog.c#L727). (In reply to Georges Basile Stavracas Neto from comment #7) > And GNOME To Do as well... Yes, we need to restore the "add" command without the "preseed" API for cookies for those applications. However, none of this [*] will work for applications running inside a Flatpak sandbox because the binaries installed on the host are not visible inside the sandbox. Are there other panels that are similarly linked to from apps? [*] Applications also use: (a) "gnome-constrol-center online-accounts" to prompt the user to add accounts. See https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/EmptyStates (b) "gnome-control-center online-accounts <account-id>" when an account needs new credentials (In reply to Bastien Nocera from comment #10) > (In reply to Andrea Azzarone from comment #9) > > Yeah but it's using the "add" command. And the "add" command is not > > available anymore. > > You're right. I'll clone this bug. Thanks, Bastien. We could have used this bug too to avoid splitting the discussion too much. :)
(In reply to Debarshi Ray from comment #12) > (In reply to Andrea Azzarone from comment #6) > >> It's been more than four years and as far as I know, nobody uses > >> this feature. > > > > That's not completely true. gnome-calendar was using (and it's still does, > > so I guess gnome-calendar is broken) this feature > > (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/blob/master/src/gcal-source- > > dialog.c#L727). > > (In reply to Georges Basile Stavracas Neto from comment #7) > > And GNOME To Do as well... > > Yes, we need to restore the "add" command without the "preseed" API for > cookies for those applications. > > However, none of this [*] will work for applications running inside a > Flatpak sandbox because the binaries installed on the host are not visible > inside the sandbox. Are there other panels that are similarly linked to from > apps? Implement a URI scheme that does the same thing, for example: gnome-settings:online-account&action=add