Should Emacs set UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 unconditionally?

Should Emacs set UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 unconditionally?

[Philipp Stephani]

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Hi,

etc/PROBLEMS has (
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/PROBLEMS?h=emacs-25.1-rc1#n1360
):

*** Warning messages when running in Ubuntu

When you start Emacs you may see something like this:

(emacs:2286): LIBDBUSMENU-GTK-CRITICAL **: watch_submenu: assertion
'GTK_IS_MENU_SHELL(menu)' failed

This happens if the Emacs binary has been renamed.  The cause is the Ubuntu
appmenu concept.  It tries to track Emacs menus and show them in the top
panel, instead of in each Emacs window.  This is not properly implemented,
so it fails for Emacs.  The order of menus is wrong, and things like
copy/paste
that depend on what state Emacs is in are usually wrong (i.e. paste disabled
even if you should be able to paste, and similar).

You can get back menus on each frame by starting emacs like this:
% env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= emacs


Are there any downsides of setting UBUNTU_MENUPROXY? It seems that it can
only ever fix problems, at least until the integration into the Unity menu
is fixed. If that is the case, should Emacs set the variable
unconditionally on startup (for its own process, not for subprocesses)?

Thanks,
Phil

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Re: Should Emacs set UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 unconditionally?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 12:03:11 +0000
> 
> You can get back menus on each frame by starting emacs like this:
> % env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= emacs
> 
> Are there any downsides of setting UBUNTU_MENUPROXY? It seems that it can only ever fix problems, at
> least until the integration into the Unity menu is fixed. If that is the case, should Emacs set the variable
> unconditionally on startup (for its own process, not for subprocesses)?

Does it really help setting the variable from within the running
Emacs?

In any case, this is only acceptable if we can reliably detect Ubuntu,
IMO.  Setting arbitrary environment variables that the user didn't ask
for is generally a misfeature.