Bug#782084: gnome-session: All extensions are disabled if Gnome crashes

[jre]

Package: gnome-session
Version: 3.14.0-2
Severity: normal


Hi,

if the Gnome session crashes it disables all extensions:

>>>
Oh no! Something has gone wrong.
A problem has occured and the system can't recover. All extensions have
been disabled as a precaution.
<<<

I've been hit by this a few times. But it never was the fault of an
extension and I always could reproduce the crash with all extensions
disabled (bug #782075 (gnome-tweak-tool), IIRC bug #762809
(libgl1-mesa-dri) and some bug in pidgin which was solved in the meantime).

So in 3 out of 3 times Gnome made the situation worse by this "precaution".

I'd prefer a dialog which offers and recommends to disable all
extensions, but allows to manually select which extensions shall stay
enabled. At least I'd like to see a list of extensions that actually
were disabled.


[Rant/Reasons why this reduces the benefit of the extensions system]

It is quite annoying to have to re-enable all extensions manually, and
to have to remember which extensions were enabled at all.

By now I only have one extension installed. I started with about 5
extensions which were mainly nice-to-have. After using the system
happily for about a year the Gnome session crashed. It took me some time
to figure out which extension initially helped me to get back the
blinking Pidgin icon (I chose "Topicons" out of 3 or 4 candidates, where
the others give the notification only for a short time or in a manner
that I didn't notice). I didn't go in reevaluating every other
installed extension that time and for now will keep track of installed
extensions manually.

I also set up Debian for non-tech-savvy people. Due to the risk of
"loosing" the extensions, I prefer not to use extensions there at all
and instead show them other, more complicated but failproof methods for
doing certain tasks. (Writing down a list of extensions and showing them
how to enable them AND making them remember this, if Gnome crashes some
time in the future is not realistic.)

[/Rant]


Should I report/discuss this upstream? If yes: where?
Or has it already been discussed (again where? I haven't found anything)?


Thanks and greets
jre



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (300, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages gnome-session depends on:
ii  gnome-session-bin      3.14.0-2
ii  gnome-session-common   3.14.0-2
ii  gnome-settings-daemon  3.14.2-3
ii  gnome-shell            3.14.2-3+b1

gnome-session recommends no packages.

Versions of packages gnome-session suggests:
ii  desktop-base      8.0.2
ii  gnome-keyring     3.14.0-1+b1
ii  gnome-user-guide  3.14.1-1

-- no debconf information