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lofidevops
Asked: 2017-07-19 02:29:52 +0800 CST

How can I update GNOME Shell extensions from the command line?

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Occassionally I get messages telling me there is an update for one of my GNOME Shell extensions, directing me to https://extensions.gnome.org/local/ where I can trigger an update through the web interface.

I would rather invoke updates from the command line, similar to calling apt update && apt upgrade. How can I do this?

command-line

2 Answers

  1. The comments on this omgubuntu.co.uk article list two possible ways:

    1. The GNOME Shell Extension Installer · Github, a bash script to install and search extensions from extensions.gnome.org. Install it with

      wget -O gnome-shell-extension-installer "https://github.com/brunelli/gnome-shell-extension-installer/raw/master/gnome-shell-extension-installer"
chmod +x gnome-shell-extension-installer
sudo mv gnome-shell-extension-installer /usr/bin/

    Update the extensions 23 and 42 for GNOME Shell 3.18.4 with

        ids=( 23 42 )
    gnome=3.18.4
    gnome-shell-extension-installer ${ids[@]} $gnome --yes --update --restart-shell

    Update all extensions with

        gnome-shell-extension-installer --yes --update --restart-shell

    I couldn’t test it, but I’m pretty sure it’s scriptable.

    1. If you installed your extensions by cloning their git repos to /path/ you can just git pull the repos one after one:

      for i in /path/*; do
  git -C "$i" pull
done

    After that you need to reload GNOME Shell with either Alt+F2 and r or the command gnome-shell -r.

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  2. The gnomeshell-extension-manage script by Nicolas Bernaerts allows to install and remove GNOME Shell extensions both system-wide and in user space.

    Here's how you would install it:

    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NicolasBernaerts/ubuntu-scripts/master/ubuntugnome/gnomeshell-extension-manage
chmod 755 gnomeshell-extension-manage
sudo mv -iv gnomeshell-extension-manage /usr/local/bin/gnome-shell-extension-manage

    This makes it available for every user: (alongside similar GNOME commands)

    $ gnome-shell-extension-manage 
Install/remove extension from Gnome Shell Extensions site https://extensions.gnome.org/
Extension ID should be retrieved from https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/<ID>/extension-name/
Version installed will be targeted as the same as Gnome Shell or the next available one
Parameters are :
  --install               Install extension (default)
  --remove                Remove extension
  --user                  Installation/remove in user mode (default)
  --system                Installation/remove in system mode
  --version <version>     Force Gnome version (use 'latest' to force latest one)
  --extension-id <id>     Extension ID in Gnome Shell Extension site (compulsory)

    The Gnome Shell - Management of Extensions from console blog post explains in detail how it is used. For updating an extension you need to add --version latest to the command.

    The two main differences, technically speaking, to Ian Brunelli's gnome-shell-extension-installer are that you can do system-wide installations and that it's using wget instead of curl to download the extensions.

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