Discussion about GNOME extenstions experience on Fedora Workstation

[Ryan Lerch]

Hi all,

After just doing a fresh install of f26 alpha, i noticed a few things we
might be able to improve with how our users install and use shell
extenstions.

Some of the Shell Extenstions from the GNOME website are available for
download from the Software app in Fedora Workstation, but this only seems
to be a small selection of what is available. The Shell Extenstions area in
Software also shows extenstions that are packaged up in the repos for
Fedora. The questions i have here are:

* How do we get more of the GNOME Shell Extenstions Site (GSES) based ones
to appear?
* Many of the GSES extenstions in Software don't have screenshots, and
their descriptions are pretty minimal. How can we work to make these better?
* A handful of the GSES ones that show in software are of questionable use
for Fedora Workstation. Such as:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1139/apt-update-indicator/
* The extenstions that are in the Fedora repos are listed twice in the
Software list.
* We install a few of the extenstions from the repos on Workstation by
default (such as gnome-shell-extension-alternate-tab) and the GSES version
shown in software is the one listed as "Installed" -- this furthers the
confusion of having two of the same listed in Software
* None of the extensions that are in the repos seem to be installable from
GNOME-Software. They just fail silently in the interface. For example in
F26, i tried to install OpenWeather from the repos via Software, and it
failed silently.

cheers,
ryanlerch

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2017 at 09:54:40AM +1000, Ryan Lerch wrote:
>  Some of the Shell Extenstions from the GNOME website are available
> for
>  download from the Software app in Fedora Workstation, but this only seems
>  to be a small selection of what is available. The Shell Extenstions area in
>  Software also shows extenstions that are packaged up in the repos for
>  Fedora. The questions i have here are:>  
I have an additional one. Could we produce a selection specifically
curated for the Workstation target audience — maybe even installed by
default (although I understand the resistance to that) or made
prominent?

For example, I just discovered
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1176/argos/, which I think would
be very appealing to a lot of our audience.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

[Richard Hughes]

On 6 April 2017 at 00:54, Ryan Lerch <rlerch(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Some of the Shell Extenstions from the GNOME website are available
> for
>  download from the Software app in Fedora Workstation, but this only seems to
>  be a small selection of what is available. 
There's an open bug about this; but basically it's because you're on a
prerelease gnome-shell and the shell extension site is give us a
subset of results. Fix in progress serverside.

>  * Many of the GSES extenstions in Software don't have
> screenshots, and their
>  descriptions are pretty minimal. How can we work to make these better? 
The ones from the extension site are pretty poor generally. After a
long period of not having an upstream maintainer we now have some
fresh blood so maybe we have some engineering resources to look at
this now.

>  * A handful of the GSES ones that show in software are of
> questionable use
>  for Fedora Workstation. Such as:
>  https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1139/apt-update-indicator/ 
Can you file this as an upstream bz against gnome-software please; we
should have a mechanism to "block" things that just don't work.

>  * None of the extensions that are in the repos seem to be installable
> from
>  GNOME-Software. They just fail silently in the interface. For example in
>  F26, i tried to install OpenWeather from the repos via Software, and it
>  failed silently. 
I'm away from my computer at the moment, but if you could open an
upstream bug with the --verbose trace I can have a look at it later.

Richard

[Ryan Lerch]

On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 7:06 AM, Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 6 April 2017 at 00:54, Ryan Lerch <rlerch(a)redhat.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  > Some of the Shell Extenstions from the GNOME website are available for
>  > download from the Software app in Fedora Workstation, but this only
>  seems to
>  > be a small selection of what is available.
>
>  There's an open bug about this; but basically it's because you're on a
>  prerelease gnome-shell and the shell extension site is give us a
>  subset of results. Fix in progress serverside.
>
>  > * Many of the GSES extenstions in Software don't have screenshots, and
>  their
>  > descriptions are pretty minimal. How can we work to make these better?
>
>  The ones from the extension site are pretty poor generally. After a
>  long period of not having an upstream maintainer we now have some
>  fresh blood so maybe we have some engineering resources to look at
>  this now.
>  
What's the best way for an individual to get involved here to help make
this data better?


>  > * A handful of the GSES ones that show in software are of questionable
>  use
>  > for Fedora Workstation. Such as:
>  > https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1139/apt-update-indicator/
>
>  Can you file this as an upstream bz against gnome-software please; we
>  should have a mechanism to "block" things that just don't work.
>  
Done, filed as:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781001


>  > * None of the extensions that are in the repos seem to be installable
>  from
>  > GNOME-Software. They just fail silently in the interface. For example in
>  > F26, i tried to install OpenWeather from the repos via Software, and it
>  > failed silently.
>
>  I'm away from my computer at the moment, but if you could open an
>  upstream bug with the --verbose trace I can have a look at it later.
>  
Done, and filed as:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781003

I also filed another that might be related:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781002

cheers,
ryanlerch


>  Richard
>  _______________________________________________
>  desktop mailing list -- desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to desktop-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>

[Ryan Lerch]

On Fri., 7 Apr. 2017 at 1:22 am, Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
wrote:

>  On Thu, Apr 06, 2017 at 09:54:40AM +1000, Ryan Lerch wrote:
>  > Some of the Shell Extenstions from the GNOME website are available for
>  > download from the Software app in Fedora Workstation, but this only seems
>  > to be a small selection of what is available. The Shell Extenstions area
>  in
>  > Software also shows extenstions that are packaged up in the repos for
>  > Fedora. The questions i have here are:>
>
>  I have an additional one. Could we produce a selection specifically
>  curated for the Workstation target audience — maybe even installed by
>  default (although I understand the resistance to that) or made
>  prominent?
>
>  For example, I just discovered
>  https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1176/argos/, which I think would
>  be very appealing to a lot of our audience.
>  
At the very least (but not really pertaining to this discussion), that
would make a great magazine article :D


One thing I am unsure of here, is how we curate the Featured Apps in
Software for Fedora. Is it a simple process to change this, say, once a
week?

cheers,
ryanlerch



>  --
>  Matthew Miller
>  <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
>  Fedora Project Leader
>  _______________________________________________
>  desktop mailing list -- desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to desktop-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>

[Matthias Clasen]

On Fri, 2017-04-07 at 10:40 +1000, Ryan Lerch wrote
>  
>  
>  One thing I am unsure of here, is how we curate the Featured Apps in
>  Software for Fedora. Is it a simple process to change this, say, once
>  a week? 
We should look at this again. Alberto is just looking at letting Admins
override this in Fleetcommander profiles. We should maybe look at
downloading this file from some place.