Dash-to-panel: [not an issue] Extension development questions

[RomanShumikhin]

Hi @jderose9,

This is not an issue, I am just wondering what tools you are using for development and debugging of your extension?

I tried developing gnome-shell extensions before, created a simple timezone extension based on moment.js which I never published, but that was a very frustrating experience since there was virtually no documentation and no way to debug your code. I had to change a line of code, add log statement and restart the whole shell every time :(

I could help addressing some of the issues if it was easier.
Maybe other developers here can share their experiences here too.

My questions are:

1. What editor/IDE you are using?
2. Is there a way to attach a debugger? (this extension is pretty big, can't imaging debugging it with log(...) statements)
3. Where do you check the documentation for the methods you use in your extension?
4. Is there a way to monitor all extension/globally emitted events in real time or log it? (maybe via gnome looking glass app?)

Thank you, Jason!

[jderose9]

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of great answers for you.

1. For laying out the settings UI I use Glade to open the Settings.ui file. For the javascript, I use Visual Studio Code. I use it on other projects and on other platforms so I am familiar with it. It doesn't have any features specific to gnome shell.

2. The only reference I've ever seen to attaching a debugger is here:
   https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/DebuggingJavaScript

   I haven't tried it yet. You have to connect from another computer or virtual terminal to stop at a breakpoint, otherwise you would be pausing execution of the desktop environment you are using. I'd like to give this a shot soon though.

   I use calls to log() and monitor them and exceptions by keeping a terminal open with this command running:
   journalctl /usr/bin/gnome-shell -f -o cat

   I also use Looking Glass (Alt F2 -> "lg") to issue commands real time (usually to test something out before actually putting it in the extension code) and to inspect the UI elements.

   Whenever I make a code change, I run "make install" to deploy it and then restart gnome shell (Alt F2 -> "r")

3. Gnome shell doesn't have any documentation that I am aware of. You just have to read the code. I just keep a 2nd instance of VS Code running with the gnome-shell repo open.

   The rendering of the UI is managed with Clutter. There is API reference documentation here but it's fairly sparse:
   https://developer.gnome.org/clutter/1.26/

4. I'm not sure. It may be possible to wrap the existing event handling code in the ClutterActor prototype to log them, but I haven't tried that. One issue is that the gnome javascript is a wrapper around C code and you can really only access what has been exposed.

If you learn about any improvements on this process, please share :)

[jderose9]

@micheleg on #75 posted this link about the possibility of a GJS debugger coming for 3.26:

https://ptomato.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/gjs-whats-next/

I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.