Sway: xdg-open from Flatpak on Sway fails

Created on 30 Oct 2020 · 7Comments · Source: swaywm/sway

Please fill out the following:

Sway Version:
- 1.4

OS is Silverblue 32

Configuration File:

Default, but with this addition to try to make xdg-open open Firefox from within a Flatpak:

exec "dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd DISPLAY MOZ_DBUS_REMOTE"

I also have MOZ_DBUS_REMOTE=1 set in my environment.

Description:
Originally, when clicking on URLs in apps running in flatpak I'd get these errors:

Oct 29 12:04:48 localhost.localdomain xdg-desktop-portal[4551]: Error: no DISPLAY environment variable specified
Oct 29 12:05:18 localhost.localdomain xdg-desktop-por[4515]: Failed to get application states: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed: Could not get window list
Oct 29 12:09:03 localhost.localdomain xdg-desktop-portal[5368]: Error: no DISPLAY environment variable specified
Oct 29 12:09:06 localhost.localdomain xdg-desktop-portal[5390]: Error: no DISPLAY environment variable specified

It would print a new no DISPLAY... error every time I clicked a URL.

I followed these directions from a related issue in xdg-desktop-portal https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/285#issuecomment-665109459 which recommended the above dbus-update-activation-environment line.

After that, I no longer got the no DISPLAY environment ... log errors in xdg-desktop-portal.
However, Firefox would still give the dreaded "Firefox not responding ... no profile .. " dialog box.

As was explained by @hadess in https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/285#issuecomment-719076010 this is because the DISPLAY variable isn't registered by sway at startup, so there is no way to pipe the display through to the flatpak execution context.

Is there another recommended approach to teach my flatpak apps how to launch URLs?

bug

Source

rrichardson

All 7 comments

This isn't a Sway bug, Sway has nothing to do with systemd.

emersion on 30 Oct 2020

@emersion - Thanks for the update.

So what would be the route by which flatpak apps under sway could interact with other components in the system?

Opening URLs from within Flatpak apps works by default in mutter/Gnome, but not in sway. Apparently mutter relies on systemd in order to get the appropriate information into dbus.

How would this be done under sway?

rrichardson on 30 Oct 2020

Workaround you found can be used for third-party software that (ab)uses systemd like this.

emersion on 30 Oct 2020

This isn't a Sway bug, Sway has nothing to do with systemd.

The problem doesn't have anything to do with systemd either. You need a way to pass the DISPLAY variable from sway (which starts XWayland) to the sibling process that starts xdg-desktop-portal (whether it's systemd, or dbus-daemon, or some session helper, it doesn't matter). You don't seem to have that mechanism.