XDG Summit: Day #4

During the wee hours of the morning, David Faure posted a new mime applications specification which will allow to setup per-desktop default applications, for example, watching films in GNOME Videos in GNOME, but DragonPlayer in KDE. Up until now, this was implemented differently in at least KDE and GNOME, even to the point that GTK+ applications would use the GNOME default when running on a KDE desktop, and vice-versa.

This is made possible using XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP as implemented in gdm by Lars. This environment variable will also allow implementing a more flexible OnlyShowIn and NotShowIn desktop entry fields (especially for desktops like Unity implemented on top of GNOME, or GNOME Classic implemented on top of GNOME) and desktop-specific GSettings/dconf configurations (again, very useful for GNOME Classic). The environment variable supports applying custom configuration in sequence (first GNOME Classic then GNOME in that example).

Today, Ryan and David discussed the desktop file cache, making it faster to access desktop file data without hitting scattered files. The partial implementation used a custom structure, but, after many kdbus discussions earlier in the week, Ryan came up with a format based on serialised GVariant, the same format as kdbus messages (but implementable without implementing a full GVariant parser).

We also spent quite a bit of time writing out requirements for a filesystem notification to support some of the unloved desktop use cases. Those use cases are currently not supported by either inotify and fanotify.

That will end our face-to-face meeting. Ryan and David led a Lunch'n'Learn in the SUSE offices to engineers excited about better application integration in the desktops irrespective of toolkits.

Many thanks to SUSE for the accommodation as well as hosting the meeting in sunny Nürnberg. Special thanks to Ludwig Nussel for the morning biscuits :)

Freedesktop Summit: Day #2

Today, Ryan carried on with writing the updated specification for startup notification.

David Faure managed to get Freedesktop.org specs updated on the website (thanks to Vincent Untz for some chmod'ing), and removed a number of unneeded items in the desktop file specification, with help from Jérôme.

I fixed a number of small bugs in shared-mime-info, as well as preparing for an 8-hour train ride.

Lars experimented with technics to achieve a high score at 2048, as well as discussing various specifications, such as the possible addition of an  XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP envvar. That last suggestion descended into a full-room eye-rolling session, usually when xdg-open code was shown.

Shared-mime-info patches

Ooh, the strain.

If you filed a bug against shared-mime-info in the past and wonder why your requested mime-type still isn't in, it's just a lack of time, and the fact that most of the bug reports require too much work on my side to be integrated.

If your bug doesn't include a test case, I won't look at it.

If your bug is a copy/paste of a stand-alone mime definition file, I won't look at it.

If your bug doesn't contain any reference information, I won't look at it.

If your patch isn't git-formatted, I won't look at it.

If your patch breaks the test suite, I won't look at it.

Given the requirements to compiling shared-mime-info (git, a C compiler, and glib), I don't think I'm setting the barrier too high. Furthermore, all those requirements are spelled out in the HACKING file.

Let me know if you have any questions, or want clarification on some points, so I can update the HACKING file with that information.

Shared-mime-info translations now at Transifex.net

Which means translations don't make any more work for me:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2009-October/011087.html

New releases

bluez-gnome 0.10 was released, and now includes my patches for the "Browse device" functionality. I also released a new shared-mime-info and Totem devel version today. Everything's nicely sitting in rawhide now (or it will be if my last build worked).

Now, I'll go back to doing nothing, as I'm supposed to be on holidays.

By the way, the Simpsons movie was really nice, go and see it. That was my Wednesday morning AFK :)