Pain determining exact app id to launch apps manually

[Gerry Boland]

So I want to launch the gallery via command line using upstart-app-launch. This is what I had to do:

       phablet@mako:~$ upstart-app-launch com.ubuntu.gallery
       ** (process:3302): WARNING **: Unable to find keyfile for application 'com.ubuntu.gallery'

Me: A warning? That command should fail, as it fails to launch the app. I had hoped UAL would be clever and just find the appId with that rdns string at the start, but no.

       phablet@mako:~$ upstart-app-launch com.ubuntu.gallery_gallery
       ** (process:3338): WARNING **: Unable to find keyfile for application 'com.ubuntu.gallery_gallery'

Me: I looked around and saw other app Ids have this bit appended, gave it a shot. No idea what use that piece is.

Ok instead, have to hunt for exact version string to generate the exact app id myself.

       phablet@mako:~$ ls /usr/share/click/preinstalled/com.ubuntu.gallery/
       2.9.1.952 current

       phablet@mako:~$ upstart-app-launch com.ubuntu.gallery_gallery_current
       ** (process:3511): WARNING **: Unable to find keyfile for application 'com.ubuntu.gallery_gallery_current'

Me: wishful thinking...

phablet@mako:~$ upstart-app-launch com.ubuntu.gallery_gallery_2.9.1.952

Finally that worked.

Guys, this is horrible!
       upstart-app-launch com.ubuntu.gallery
should be enough.

       upstart-app-launch gallery
would be even better.

The specific details of the app id syntax should be transparent to the user.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

You can use "upstart-app-triplet com.ubuntu.gallery" to get the app id. But I'm going to mark this a duplicate of needing user tools instead of debugging tools. They're really not designed to be user friendly, just thin wrappers on the lib functions for debugging.