Re: GDM update!

[Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com>]

Hi Danny,

Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org> writes:

> Hi Ludo,
>
> https://github.com/GNOME/gdm/commit/0bb8a777cfc0a3bc53c2c2830dd7e6e2baeeef38#diff-9b802b1ffb5f0ff95bfaa85046d262e7 says:
>
>>custom is a magic name we used to allow for having the user decide
>> their session by a ~/.xsession file.  We no longer support that
>> construct and haven't for many years. Instead, users who want that
>> functionality can just add a xsession file to accomplish it.
>>This commit just removes some left over cruft that never got cleaned up.
>
> [...]

Thanks!  I didn’t see this before writing my other message, but it
explains why the comments and code don’t match.

Maybe the GDM folks expect that we write a custom “.desktop” file that
runs a custom script that checks for “~/.xsession” and runs it.  It
could use “TryExec” to figure out if “~/.xsession” exists, and offer it
to the user (in the session selector) in that case.  To be concrete, we
would create a “user.desktop” session file with the following contents.

    [Desktop Entry]
    Name=User Session
    Comment=Start a user-defined session
    Exec=run-user-xsession
    TryExec=xsession-exists-p
    Icon=
    Type=Application

Here, “run-user-xsession” and “xsession-exists-p” are custom scripts
that we would write.  If this file were somewhere that GDM knows about
(e.g., “/run/current-system/profile/share/xsessions”), it should work.


-- Tim