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Ranting about Gnome Shell Extension Writing

by djfm on 7/3/19, 1:34 PM with 1 comments

I like Gnome a lot.

The idea you can customize the shell using JS is just awesome, but... Nothing seems to work.

I'm reading the intro[1], where it first advocates the use of the Gnome Builder IDE

Fine, it's standard and should be easy. But it fails mysteriously after hogging yout CPU and provides you with unanswearable questions like:

> Rerun phase build > Ignore and continue to install > GIve up on module

Then the tutorial completely fotgrts about that and start speaking of Setting Up Eclipse, yeah.

Then they explain you it is not JS you'll be writing, bug kinda...

> const Workspace = new Lang.Class({ > Name: 'Workspace', > > _init : function(metaWorkspace, >monitorIndex) { > // When dragging a window, we use this >slot for reserve space. > this._reservedSlot = null; > this.metaWorkspace = metaWorkspace; >etc...

WHich honestly kinda rebukes me after page 2.

Then you need to learn a C API (JS my friends?)

> Clutter is a C programming API that allows you to create simple but visually appealing and engaging user interfaces.

> It works by transforming the c program API in general files(xml or custom files) allowing us to easily write a binding in another program language that can interpret it.

Please kill me now.

I wish we could have an atom plugin like ecosystem for desktop development. They seem to be heading towards not that different but with fundamentally different choices/constraints.

Again, please don't take this as easy criticism, just the first impressions of a dev willing to do cool stuff.

And Gnome guys, if you read me, please talk to the guys at Atom. Their thing is practically a JS OS and learning curve is close to zero.

[1]https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Extensions/StepByStepTutorial

  • by ialwaysforgetm on 7/3/19, 9:26 PM

    I really love(d) gnome since the days of Gnome 2. After gnome 3 got forced on me, I installed a bunch of extensions and made it Just Right for me. After the first apt-get update, half of my extensions were broken. Then I switched to another DE, six months later came back and got the same result. Some time later I tried again and got the same result. To me, it feels that extensions are a second class citizen: extensions are the devs excuse to "hey, if you don't like our interface you can modify it with extensions", but all the burden of keeping your extension working is on maintainers, not Gnome: in practice there's no guarantee an extension will keep working over time.

    In the end I feld like I was a person who keeps giving second chances to an abusive relationship. I finally had the courage to cut the relationship with Gnome forever after many reconciliation attempts.

    Gnome is the desktop environment that has the most money being injected into (through Red Hat), and this was supposed to mean it's one of the best DEs. But I really can't get past its UI paradigm and concluded extensions are not a viable thing.

    I am now a happy Cinnamon user.