About xfce-screensaver.c

[Simon Steinbeiss]

Hi Jarno,

since you've been around a while I guess you're aware about the amount of
development or maintenance that goes into certain topics and both
xfce4-session and xfce4-power-manager are not "vividly maintained". Since
we all do this as our hobby we work on what we enjoy or where we feel
something is really broken or needs to be improved, but this is obviously
subjective to some extent.

Regarding your topic - I'm aware of the long-time pending patches for
xflock4, but there were always reservations about building an "intelligent
lock script". Simply summarized: putting something as sensitive as locking
on the shoulders of a (then: complex) bash script doesn't sound like
something we want to maintain or be responsible for. So we basically stuck
to the "simple/dumb" solution that xflock4 is today.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we can't improve xflock4, but I'd prefer
small(er) steps since testing these things is tedious (multiple platforms,
multiple lockers) and a manual task.

I agree that there are various components in Xfce that duplicate code or
functionality and the overlap between xfce4-session and xfce4-power-manager
is definitely there. From my point of view this is one of the downsides of
trying to be modular and not being able to rely on a "shell" or "set of
components" always being available.
I would appreciate an overview of the current situation (I also don't know
all the relevant code by heart) and how we can improve the relation between
session and power-manager with respect to locking.

"some people talk if we should drop support for anything else than
xfce4-screensaver" - who and where? I do not see a prominent discussion
(but I may also be unaware).
With xfce4-screensaver's author recently having announced his departure
from Xfce (or at least: a change of focus) I don't see us doubling down on
that screensaver as our only supported solution.

Cheers
Simon


On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 9:19 PM Jarno Suni <sunijarno at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> Can someone explain why we have almost identical code
> xfce-screensaver.c duplicated in xfce4-power-manager and xfce4-session
> projects? I wonder, if xdg-screensaver could be used more to handle
> screensaver inhibition? I tried to contact Eric Koegel who added the
> files to look at my merge request, but I did not get any response. Is
> he still around for Xfce? I am very disappointed and frustrated about
> contributing to Xfce. I have reported a bug that requests that screen
> locking should be done synchronously about 7 years ago and I haven't
> got response from core developers even after posting a merge request.
>
> https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/-/merge_requests/20
>
> Currently configurability of deskop locker sucks big time and it seems
> no-one else wants to do something about it even if the primary
> offering xfce4-screensaver sucks, too. User can choose e.g. preferred
> file manager and terminal emulator, but some people talk if we should
> drop support for anything else than xfce4-screensaver. Why? Xfce has
> reputation of being configurable and flexible DE, so I wonder why
> doesn't this issue get more attention?
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