Bug#553426: choose-session option missing with no upgrade path

[Joerg Dorchain]

On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 02:46:55PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le samedi 31 octobre 2009 à 08:13 +0100, Joerg Dorchain a écrit : 
> > - gnome-session and X via startx does not start at all, leaving
> >   no direct trace to the --choose-session option anywhere. IMHO
> >   this change should be made clearer, at least in a file in
> >   /usr/share/doc/gnome-session/
> >   A very obcure thing to debug, IMHO impossible for mere users.
> >   Thus, the upgrade breaks previously running systems without
> >   notice.
> 
> Sorry but I don???t buy this. Mere users don???t configure the
> --choose-session option by hand. This feature never worked properly to
> begin with. You???re probably the first one to complain of its removal.

Well, let's not argue what mere users do or don't. Besides I am
getting this "You are the first..." much too often from so called
"hotlines".

This feature worked at least satisfying for me. Yet again,
potential problems were not mentioned in obvious place like the
bugs section of the man page.

gnome-session not accepting this option anymore leads to a
failure to startx the gnome desktop, with no trace of where to
search for reasons neither in the Xorg.0.log nor .xsession-errors
It is also not documented in the changelog.
> 
> > - I have no idea and found no information on how to convert my
> >   old sessions from .gnome2/session into the new format. Internet
> >   search does not really help here. If this bug report does not
> >   help neither, I have to consider that this upgrade caused a loss of
> >   user data.
> >   If there is a procedure (script would be fine), it could be
> >   mentioned in /usr/share/doc/gnome-session/upgrade or the like.
> 
> There is no such script. If you can provide one, we could patch
> gnome-session so that it is executed at the upgrade time, but be warned
> that it won???t be trivial to write, since the new format requires more
> information than the old one used to.

Thank you again for scaring away users. (More of a problem caused
by upstream, nevertheless the effect hits the distribution users)
Giving a hint on a known effect, even when you consider it as
wont-fix, is better than nothing.

To the topic, do you happen to know documentation about both old and
new format? Pointers would be welcome.
A way to choose different session at startup would already be
fine for me, as probably reading through the old session file and
re-creating its content by hand would be sufficient, esp. as you
do not see widespread demand.
Would that be the --default-session-key option? Would this then
also be the location where gnome-session-save writes to?

Bye,

Joerg
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