Shell: Android Studio emulator flashing

[svenoaks]

Distribution (run cat /etc/os-release):
NAME="Pop!_OS"
VERSION="20.04 LTS"
ID=pop
ID_LIKE="ubuntu debian"
PRETTY_NAME="Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS"
VERSION_ID="20.04"
HOME_URL="https://system76.com/pop"
SUPPORT_URL="http://support.system76.com"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://system76.com/privacy"
VERSION_CODENAME=focal
UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal
LOGO=distributor-logo-pop-os

Related Application and/or Package Version (run apt policy pop-shell or provide the latest commit if building locally):

pop-shell:
Installed: 0.1.0~1588624471~20.04~dfb378c
Candidate: 0.1.0~1588624471~20.04~dfb378c
Version table:
* 0.1.0~1588624471~20.04~dfb378c 1001
1001 http://ppa.launchpad.net/system76/pop/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages
1001 http://ppa.launchpad.net/system76/pop/ubuntu focal/main i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Issue/Bug Description:

The Android emulator window flashes repeatedly and endlessly as the tiling manager tries to position the window. It appears the emulator attempts to resize the window itself and is fighting with pop-shell.

Steps to reproduce (if you know):

Open Android Studio
Start an emulator
Enable Tile Windows in Pop-shell

Expected behavior:

The Android emulator appears normally and is tiled liked any other window.

Other Notes:

[mmstick]

What is the WM_CLASS of the emulator? If you watch the gnome-shell logs, you should see debug info from Pop Shell each time you focus a window.

[svenoaks]

@mmstick How do I view this log?

[mmstick]

Our makefile defines make listen as running

journalctl -o cat -n 0 -f "$(which gnome-shell)" | grep -v warning

[svenoaks]

pop-shell: [DEBUG] unblocking signals for 5,2
../../../gobject/gsignal.c:2696: handler '78003' of instance '0x562084d386c0' is not blocked
../../../gobject/gsignal.c:2696: handler '78004' of instance '0x562084d386c0' is not blocked
../../../gobject/gsignal.c:2696: handler '78005' of instance '0x562084d386c0' is not blocked
../../../gobject/gsignal.c:2696: handler '78006' of instance '0x562084d386c0' is not blocked
pop-shell: [INFO] focused Window(5,2) {
name: Unknown,
rect: Rect(3173,271,666,1232),
wm_class: "null",
monitor: 0,
workspace: 0,
cmdline: /home/svenoaks/Android/Sdk/emulator/qemu/linux-x86_64/qemu-system-x86_64,
xid: 0x6200005,
}

[mmstick]

Ow. They need to define a wm_class, window name, and honestly they should hint to the window manager that this window isn't tilable, or at least accept that the window manager may try to tile it.

[likern]

Now only flashing. But breaks tiling in other different ways. For example, if I switch to another workspace, I immediately and automatically return back to where my android emulator (and VS Code window) was. Also I've seen some artifacts on emulator and so on. And with opened emulator I can't even switch windows.

In the end if emulator is opened tiling becomes totally unusable.

[BobbyByrne]

Could there be a toggle setting for choosing to ignore apps with null wm_class? or some other indicator that the window is having issues with being resized?

[Prn-Ice]

Also having this issue.

[buzzie-bee]

Also having this issue. A toggle to ignore apps with a null wm_class or the ability to identify specific apps/windows which shouldn't be tiled would be great. Even a bash command to tell pop shell to not tile a specific window would work. The android studio main window also suffers some jank when loading the small square intro screen (likely because of the same issue).

[KeyStarr]

Also having this issue. I just want to emphasize that this makes autotile quite unusable for android dev.
Which is sad, such a great feature!

[Prn-Ice]

This is the only reason I have it off right now.

[mmstick]

@buzzie-bee That feature's already supported: ~/.config/pop-shell/config.json

[buzzie-bee]

@mmstick Ahh nice. Tried modifying that config.json but unfortunately it's not picking up on the window name. Probably due to the issues described above. I've seen some bash scripts which let you manually set the WM_CLASS which I'll try at some point.

[mmstick]

Super + G can float a window after the fact if you want to detach it from the tree. They're no longer influenced by auto-tiling once they're marked as floating.