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

[Josselin Mouette]

Le mardi 03 novembre 2009 à 15:27 +0100, Joerg Dorchain a écrit : 
> 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 guess we could get gnome-session to accept the option while ignoring
it. Such a change wouldn’t harm.

> > 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.

Asking users to re-save the session after a major upgrade (the kind of
upgrades that happen once in a few years) doesn’t seem that much of a
hurdle. But again, I’d be happy to include such a script if it existed,
it’s just that no developer or Debian maintainer considered this issue
critical enough to write the script himself.

> To the topic, do you happen to know documentation about both old and
> new format? Pointers would be welcome.

The old format is in .gnome2/session. It is quite self-explanatory. The
new format consists in XDG desktop files found
in .config/gnome-session/saved-session, with added fields to add the ID
and the discard command.

Migrating to the new format requires locating reliably the desktop file
corresponding to each client located in the saved session, and putting
the modified version in the saved session directory.

> 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?

I think a --saved-session-dir option allowing to select another location
would be fine. But I’d prefer if such a change would be accepted
upstream, as it is more intrusive.

-- 
 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'   “I recommend you to learn English in hope that you in
  `-     future understand things”  -- Jörg Schilling
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