Desktop Icons NG shell extension breaks Activities vew

[Carlo Lobrano]

First reported here https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/installing-just-one-extension-makes-ubuntu-eoan-to-fail/12816

Steps

1. I tried first to disabled default Desktop Icons extension(1)
2. I installed "Desktop Icons NG" from https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2087/desktop-icons-ng-ding/
3. Tested the extension was properly working (DnD, open folders) OK
4. Opened the Activity view: stuck in this view

At this stage there is no way to exit from the activity view. Arrow keys work fine for moving the selection on open window, search works fine as well, but pressing Enter key does nothing, as well as clicking on the close window X does not kill the windows.
Logging out is the only way to recover, until Activity view is opened again.

Reproduced on Eoan in a VM, while it is not reproducible on Fedora 29 (currently I can't test the latest fedora, but the original report made more tests and it seems reproducible in Eoan only).

This extension provides some more common features for desktop icons, so it is likely to be installed more in the future.

Note:
1. The default desktop icons extension looks always disabled (GNOME tweaks switch is off), even if it's actually working, so I just switched the visibility of the icons off from default Desktop Icons settings. This very likely did not disable the extension, but it's likely what a normal user would do.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.34.0-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-13.14-generic 5.3.0
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-13-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Oct 5 11:18:50 2019
DisplayManager: gdm3
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 3.34.0-3ubuntu1
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Does this bug affect the vanilla GNOME session or only the Ubuntu session?

If it only affects the Ubuntu session, it is probably just a compatibility problem between Ubuntu's desktop icons extension and the "NG" extension.

Since the "NG" extension is newer, I think it's appropriate for the "NG" extension to not break systems where the official desktop icons extension is already installed. Please report this issue to the NG developers.

[chanath (chanath)]

It affects both Ubuntu session and vanilla Gnome session.
In Arch Linux, there's only a vanilla Gnome session, and it works there.

This NG extension is been there for few months. The NG developer is the same person that maintains the UBuntu Desktop Icons system extension. His extension is named desktop-icons@csoriano, so probably cannot become.stay as a system extension.

[Carlo Lobrano (c-lobrano)]

It seems to work fine on Ubuntu using GNOME vanilla session.

I don't know if it has been reported already to Carlos (I didn't know he was the maintainer), but I wonder if it's possible to fix the status of Desktop Icon on Ubuntu, since it doesn't seem to be possible to disable it.

[Carlo Lobrano (c-lobrano)]

On GNOME vanilla session, enabling both extensions it shows a different behavior. Everything seems to work properly except that GNOME-Tweaks fails to start (Failed to register: Timeout was reached)

[chanath (chanath)]

You can find the Ubuntu Desktop Icons System Extension here; https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons and here; https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1465/desktop-icons/

Both links install the same desktop-icons@csoriano

The NG extension allows drag and drop, but won't work in Ubuntu, default session or vanilla session.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Maybe there's a way to workaround it on the Ubuntu side, but I think the greater responsibility is on the NG developer side. Please file a bug with NG instead.

[chanath (chanath)]

Extensions are released for everyone, not specifically for Ubuntu, so not the extension developer's responsibility to check, which distros would work. Quote https://extensions.gnome.org/about/ "All extensions uploaded to this site are carefully reviewed for malicious behavior before they are made available for download."

As users are normal people, they'd try out any extension out there, and Ubuntu 19.10 would fail.
Any extension downloaded from https://extensions.gnome.org/about/ would install it in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions and would override the system extension, user comes first.

Both extensions are from the same author, whatever the name of the extension (for example, desktop-icons@csoriano). If we take the system Desktop Icons extension, it cannot be blocked from any future development by the author/maintainer. What we call Desktop Icons system extension is static, as it is, while the maintainer had upgraded it few days ago.

The bug is here in Ubuntu Eoan, not with the extension.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

The extension ID is supposed to be unique. It is a serious bug if NG is using the same extension ID as an existing extension. I imagine the maintainers of extensions.gnome.org would remove an extension for that issue if it was reported. Until that bug is fixed, I don't think Ubuntu has any responsibility to attempt to block the broken extension.

[Dominik Förderer (dominik-foerderer)]

The Problem is independent from the NG extension. I disabled the Ubuntu Desktop Icons extension by moving it away from /usr/share/gnome-shell/extension because i use nemo-desktop. After that the activity view is broken as described above. I use nemo-desktop the last 4 years together with gnome-shell and had no problems.