Eclipse loses "Always on Visible Workspace" setting

[James Baldassari]

I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on a laptop with an external monitor. I like to keep Eclipse up on the external monitor at all times no matter which workspace I'm on, so I right-click the Eclipse window and select "Always on Visible Workspace." However, when any dialog window/box is opened in Eclipse (e.g. Help -> About Eclipse), the main Eclipse window loses its "Always on Visible Workspace" setting. The expected behavior is that the Eclipse window always maintains its "Always on Visible Workspace" setting until I manually disable it or restart the program.

I should mention that I'm not using the Eclipse package from the Jaunty repository because it's too old. Instead I'm using the Eclipse Galileo binary distribution from eclipse.org. Visual effects are disabled in System -> Preferences -> Appearance.

Also, this bug seems very similar to bug #377934. The differences are that it's happening to me using Ecilpse on Jaunty rather than Firefox on Intrepid.

[James Baldassari (jbaldassari)]

Oops, I made a typo in the Ubuntu version number. Of course I meant Ubuntu 9.04, not 9.0.4.

[Gabe Gorelick (gabegorelick)]

I understand your desire to run the latest version of Eclipse, but Ubuntu can only fix bugs in packages that are part of Ubuntu. That being said, can you see if this bug exists in Karmic. The version of eclipse included in the karmic repo is 3.5.1 last I checked, so it is totally up to date anyway. Thanks.

[James Baldassari (jbaldassari)]

Hi Gabe,

I reported the bug because I thought it might have been caused by gnome/metacity rather than Eclipse itself. I haven't upgraded to Karmic yet, but when I do so I'll try using Eclipse from the Karmic repository, and I'll update this bug with the results. Thanks.

[galmeida (galmeida-directtalk)]

same here on Ubuntu 9.10

[Gabe Gorelick (gabegorelick)]

@galmeida you can confirm this using the eclipse from the Karmic repository?

[galmeida (galmeida-directtalk)]

@Gabe I will try it tomorrow, today I'm out of office.

[galmeida (galmeida-directtalk)]

@Gabe, confirmed using eclipse from the Karmic repository

galmeida@galmeida:~$ dpkg -l eclipse
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-=======================================-=======================================-==============================================================================================
ii eclipse 3.5.1+repack~1-0ubuntu3 Extensible Tool Platform and Java IDE

[James Baldassari (jbaldassari)]

This has been impacting my productivity for a long time now, so I spent a couple hours on it today, and I think I *finally* found a workaround for this bug. First, install devilspie and wmctrl. Create the directory ~/.devilspie or /etc/devilspie, depending on whether you want this setting to be user-specific of system-wide. Inside your devilspie directory of choice, create a file called eclipse.ds with the following contents (not sure if this will be formatted nicely when I paste it):

(if
        (matches (window_class) "[Ee]clipse")
        (begin
                (debug)
                (spawn_sync "sleep 0.1")
                (pin)
                (spawn_sync "wmctrl -xr Eclipse -b 'add,sticky'")
        )
)

Now to try this out:
devilspie -d -a

The -d will output some debugging info to let you know that devilspie found and loaded your config file and S-expression. The -a applies the S-expression to any windows that are already open in case you already have Eclipse running. The "(debug)" expression in the eclipse script will output debugging information that will allow you to see that devilspie is working whenever an Eclipse window event occurs. It's safe to remove this expression later.

To enable this automatically every time you log into Gnome, go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications, and add devilspie as a new start-up application (/usr/bin/devilspie -a).

See the following for more info:
http://live.gnome.org/DevilsPie
http://foosel.org/linux/devilspie
http://tripie.sweb.cz/utils/wmctrl

As far as workarounds go, this is on the ugly side, so I don't think this bug should be closed. I just hope this helps someone else who is equally frustrated in the meantime.

[James Baldassari (jbaldassari)]

Update: this bug still exists in 11.04. I'm still using the devilspie workaround, which is better than nothing but isn't great.

[karlwilbur (karlwilbur)]

I am also seeing this behavior with Google Chrome and now Brave on Ubuntu 18.04 and now 20.04.

I use about a dozen workspaces and keep my Gmail window, with a few other tabs, "Always on Visible Workspace" but frequently this setting goes away; not every day but several times (4-6, maybe) a week. What happens I'll switch to a workspace, hit the super key, and no GMail. I have to go find which workspace has it, then recheck "Always on Visible Workspace". Then it's good for a few hours/days. Frustrating. Shouldn't happen.

I could set a cron job to keep setting this property but I might have other windows with the same or similar title which I want to stay where they are. I guess I could get the `wmctrl` ID for this window and use that in the cron job rather than the title, but then why does this setting even exist, right?

[egor83 (egor-ryabkov)]

Happens to me with Double Commander on Ubuntu 20.04 as well.
I wasn't able to find specific action that leads to DC losing the setting, seems to happen randomly. Happens about 2-3 times a day.