Ranting about Gnome Shell Extension Writing
The idea you can customize the shell using JS is just awesome, but... Nothing seems to work.
I'm reading the intro[1], where it first advocates the use of the Gnome Builder IDE
Fine, it's standard and should be easy. But it fails mysteriously after hogging yout CPU and provides you with unanswearable questions like:
> Rerun phase build > Ignore and continue to install > GIve up on module
Then the tutorial completely fotgrts about that and start speaking of Setting Up Eclipse, yeah.
Then they explain you it is not JS you'll be writing, bug kinda...
> const Workspace = new Lang.Class({ > Name: 'Workspace', > > _init : function(metaWorkspace, >monitorIndex) { > // When dragging a window, we use this >slot for reserve space. > this._reservedSlot = null; > this.metaWorkspace = metaWorkspace; >etc...
WHich honestly kinda rebukes me after page 2.
Then you need to learn a C API (JS my friends?)
> Clutter is a C programming API that allows you to create simple but visually appealing and engaging user interfaces.
> It works by transforming the c program API in general files(xml or custom files) allowing us to easily write a binding in another program language that can interpret it.
Please kill me now.
I wish we could have an atom plugin like ecosystem for desktop development. They seem to be heading towards not that different but with fundamentally different choices/constraints.
Again, please don't take this as easy criticism, just the first impressions of a dev willing to do cool stuff.
And Gnome guys, if you read me, please talk to the guys at Atom. Their thing is practically a JS OS and learning curve is close to zero.
[1]https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Extensions/StepByStepTutorial