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Bug 620888 - Remote App handling
Remote App handling
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gnome-shell
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: gnome-shell-maint
gnome-shell-maint
: 657203 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2010-06-07 19:22 UTC by drago01
Modified: 2021-07-05 14:29 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description drago01 2010-06-07 19:22:46 UTC
We need design on how we should handle remote apps/windows in the shell, as the current approach where we simply threat them as local ones is broken.

See: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=620855
Comment 1 Colin Walters 2010-06-07 19:27:55 UTC
Actually a patch which uses the fallback app-from-window case for these would make sense a quick step.
Comment 2 Allan Day 2013-08-30 11:04:09 UTC
Do we still need this? Can you give more details on what is required?
Comment 3 drago01 2013-08-30 11:29:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> Do we still need this? 

Yes.

> Can you give more details on what is required?

Lets say I do 
# ssh -Y somehows
# firefox

How should that remote firefox show up? Mixing it with the local one is weird and broken (and what if I don't have firefox installed?).

So the question is how should interaction with remote apps work.
Comment 4 Allan Day 2013-08-30 13:01:14 UTC
I'm not particularly familiar with this behaviour. Why someone use an app remotely? Is the same app likely to be running as a local instance? Any details you could provide there would be helpful.

Anyway, I think we should treat remote apps as a separate instance of the application. As such, if you have a local and a remote Firefox running at the same time, there should be an app launcher (in the dash, app switcher and apps view) for each of them.

We could append the hostname to the name of the app, so it would be like "Firefox (my-server)" for the remote instance. It might also be a good idea to try adding an emblem (maybe something like network-transmit-receive-symbolic) to the app icon to indicate that it's different.
Comment 5 drago01 2013-08-30 13:41:55 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> I'm not particularly familiar with this behaviour. Why someone use an app
> remotely?

It is not something that you will see people do at home much but in corporate environments remote apps are not that uncommon.

> Is the same app likely to be running as a local instance? Any details
> you could provide there would be helpful.

It is possible but it most not be. The firefox example is a bit odd because there is not much need for that. Or maybe there is for privacy reasons to run your browser elsewhere or whatever crazy ideas people come up with ;)

> Anyway, I think we should treat remote apps as a separate instance of the
> application. As such, if you have a local and a remote Firefox running at the
> same time, there should be an app launcher (in the dash, app switcher and apps
> view) for each of them.

There is a problem though if the remote app is not installed locally. Which icon do we use? We current show the grey rectangle which kind of sux.

> We could append the hostname to the name of the app, so it would be like
> "Firefox (my-server)" for the remote instance. It might also be a good idea to
> try adding an emblem (maybe something like network-transmit-receive-symbolic)
> to the app icon to indicate that it's different.

We currently show a hint on the window titles "Firefox (on hostname)" and the icon thing would make sense but we don't always have the icon.
Comment 6 Florian Müllner 2015-03-05 01:40:13 UTC
*** Bug 657203 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2021-07-05 14:29:22 UTC
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of  gitlab.gnome.org.
As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org
which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately
quite limited so not every ticket can get handled).

If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent
and supported software version, then please follow
  https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines
and create a new ticket at
  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/

Thank you for your understanding and your help.