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Alistair Buxton
Asked: 2012-12-03 14:16:46 +0800 CST

With respect to gnome-session, what is a "component"?

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Under /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions are files which describe the different types of sessions available from gnome-session. In these files is a list of required components, eg for shell:

RequiredComponents=gnome-shell;gnome-settings-daemon;

or for fallback:

RequiredComponents=gnome-panel;gnome-settings-daemon;

This appears to be a list of executables, but it is not. If I change gnome-panel to some other type of panel, the session does not start, and I see the following errors in ~/.xsession-errors:

gnome-session[2003]: WARNING: Unable to find required component 'xfce4-panel'

So my question: What is a component, how are they defined, and where does gnome-session look for them?

gnome

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    A component is defined in a .desktop like a normal application. It must also include a key defining the name of the component it provides such as:

    X-GNOME-Provides=panel

    Here "panel" is the name of the component.

    This is documented at https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/SessionManagement/RequiredComponents

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