Fwd: Roadmap for lxsession

[Julien Lavergne]

Just to inform you about the changes on lxsession which is going to
land in saucy in a few days. It's already available for people using
the daily LXDE PPA.

Regards,
Julien Lavergne


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Julien Lavergne <gilir at ubuntu.com>
Date: 2013/6/2
Subject: Roadmap for lxsession
To: LXDE mailing list <lxde-list at lists.sourceforge.net>


Hi,

I'm going to tag the 0.4.9.2 version of lxsession in git. It's still
an alpha version, but it still contains the main modifications I had
in mind. I plan to make others alpha / beta milestones, to release a
stable 0.5.0 release on September / October 2013 (for Lubuntu 13.10).
It's also a good occasion to summarize all the changes made on
lxsession the past months, and to see if you have any comments /
wishes / complaints ...

Merging source and new binaries :
Now lxsession is the home for lxpolkit and lxsession-edit, which means
we probably need to remove the previous git trees to avoid confusion.
There is also a need to merge translations from the previous tree.
Also, new independent binaries are available in lxsession :
- lxclipboard, which enable GTK clipboard support when it's running.
- lxsession-default : a set of scripts to launch default applications
(see below for default applications).
- lxsession-default-apps : a GUI to configure lxsession. Currently,
the GUI is horrible, but it's mostly to debug lxsession. It can be
used by users, but a better one can be made in the future :-)
- lxsession-logout is now independent from lxsession, you can launch
it in an openbox only session.

Compilation flags :
There is 2 new configuration flags : --enable-buildin-clipboard
–enable-buildin-polkit . They enable support for clipboard (like
lxcliboard) and polkit agent (like lxpolkit) directly in lxsession. It
means you need only to run lxsession to have both support. The
advantage also is to reduce the memory need to run multiple programs.
The disadvantage is that it adds GTK dependency on lxsession. If you
want to use lxsession without GTK, you need to turn them off, and find
others applications to provide those functionalities.

Applications settings :
Previously, you could only configure the windows manager. Now you can
set many other applications in the configuration file (such as file
manager, panel ...). See
http://lxde.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lxde/lxsession;a=blob;f=data/desktop.conf.example;hb=HEAD
for the details. It replaces the need of an autostart conf file for
many cases. The autostart conf file still exists and works, but I
strongly recommend to use the new format.
Some obvious applications are not here, such as web browser (it's  in
conf file, but it doesn't do anything for now), image viewer, video
player … because I consider them as « mime applications », which also
need a MIME association. I planned to add it, but since razor-qt is
working also on a mime association applications, I need to figure out
the best way to use it in association with lxsession.

Another option was added, is the ability to not start applications
which had configuration in autostart directories. That mean you can
install many applications and not fear they all autostart and make
your session heavier. You can use the default applications to start
only applications you want.

Dbus backend :
If you enable lxde dbus interface (which is enabled by default), you
can access every settings of lxsession with a dbus call. No need to
write on the right file to change the settings, just send a dbus call
and lxsession will deal with configuration format. You can also launch
applications configured with Dbus call (lxsession-default is just some
basic bash scripts calling Dbus method). That means you can also write
any configuration GUI in any language or toolkit (GTK or Qt), as long
as it supports Dbus.
For now, only the ini format is supported for saving the
configuration. However, a gsettings backend can be added in the
future.
Also, lxsession can, in the future, implement different dbus interface
(such as the GNOME or the XFCE one), so any applications relying on
those Dbus interfaces can running happily on lxsession.

Razor-qt configuration compatibility :
As a bonus, I added a compatibility mode for razor-qt settings.
Launching with -c razor-qt will read razor-qt settings, and  write
configuration in both lxsession and razor-qt settings files (it's
still highly untested …).

There is also various little options, like settings xrandr
configuration, keymap, or proxy environment variables at start up.

Let me know if you have any problems using it. I tested the migration
from old to this new lxsession on various systems without problem, but
it still needs a lot of testing.

Regards,
Julien Lavergne