"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Thursday 26 July 2012

Developing Gnome 3 extensions (on the EEEPC)


When I decided to install Linux Mint on the EEEPC 900 I was, among other things, particularly interested by the hidden flexibility of Gnome 3. Linux Mint interface MGSE proved Gnome 3 being far more flexible and configurable than I would ever imagined by seeing it at first. At last I managed to find some time to give a look on how Gnome 3 extensions are written. There are many sites on the Internet about developing Gnome extensions I based my experiments mainly on articles on this blog.


Hello-worlding” in Gnome-Shell
A command-line utility “gnome-shell-extension-tool” is provided to prepare all files needed in a gnome-shell extension. Once executed:
gnome-shell-extension-tool --create-extension
it asks for the extension name, “helloworld” in my case, some descriptive info and the extension unique identifier. This identifier can be any string but it takes the following mail-like form: <extension-name>@<your-name>.<your-address>.
By the way my extension identifier was “helloworld.musante@EEEPC900”.