# gnome-session-manager

**Repository Path**: mirrors_chromium_gitlab_gnome/gnome-session-manager

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: gnome-session-manager
- **Description**: No description available
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: GPL-2.0
- **Default Branch**: master
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2021-08-09
- **Last Updated**: 2025-12-14

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

This module contains the initial development of some ideas for a new
session manager. For now, it primarily serves as a counter-proposal to
Ray Strode's (and others) work in libgnomeservice.

These desktop-devel-list mails are relevant:

  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-July/msg00411.html
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-July/msg00583.html

To try and summarise quickly:

  - The session main purpose is to get a usable desktop up and running
    at login

  - The task of starting the core desktop is different from starting
    user applications at login - e.g. the same applications could be
    started no matter which desktop environment you log in to.

  - The parts of the desktop environment which need to be started at
    login are described by .desktop-service files which contain Name,
    Description, Icon and Exec keys.

  - The session manager starts a desktop service by spawning the
    command line specified in the Exec field.

    If the desktop service subsequently exits for whatever reason
    (e.g. crashes), the session manager will restart the service.

    The desktop service must notify the session manager when it has
    started by completing the startup sequence identified by the
    contents of the $DESKTOP_STARTUP_ID environment variable. With
    gtk+, this happens automatically when the first toplevel window is 
    mapped or when the service call gdk_notify_startup_complete(). See

      http://standards.freedesktop.org/startup-notification-spec/startup-notification-0.1.txt

    for more details on startup-notification.

    Good error detection and recovery is vitally important in all
    this.

  - The session manager configuration file specifies the location of
    the .desktop-service files and the list of core desktop services
    which must have completed their startup sequence before any other
    desktop services or user programs are started.

  - The session manager owns the org.gnome.SessionManager D-BUS name
    on the session bus. The /org/gnome/SessionManager object provides
    the org.gnome.SessionManager interface which is described in the
    gsm-dbus-interface.xml file.

  - What is blatantly missing in all of this is the "save current
    setup" feature provided by the current session manager using
    XSMP.

    The premise is that we'll be dropping this feature and replacing
    it with the ability for the user to configure which applications
    get started at login.

    This all needs lots of discussion but the train of thought is:

      + XSMP is designed to provide a feature akin to suspend/resume
        of your session. In practice people primarily use it as a way
        to configure how they want their desktop to look at
        login.

      + XSMP also provides the ability for apps to ask users "you have
        open documents, do you want to save them?" at logout. These
        apps should just implement automatic save/restore for all the
        other cases where data may be lost - application crashes,
        sudden power loss etc.

      + In all cases, XSMP is broken by design because it requires
        every last application to implement this complex protocol in
        order for the feature to work.

      + If you could specify which applications you want started at
        login and which workspaces they should appear on, this should
        mostly satisfy the real requirments of users. That should be a
        relatively straightforward feature to implement.