make launching apps from command line easier
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
qtmir (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Currently it is required to pass the --desktop_file_hint argument for QtMir to accept an application. This is very cumbersome as it requires to type the full path to /usr/share/
Due to our architecture, there is the need to identify applications somehow for various reasons like application matching in the ui, app confinement etc.
So far we came up with those proposals to get around this:
* allow executing arbitrary binaries, by generating the unique identifier based on binary name/path. This would probably break some things, but seems to be "good enough" for quickly running something. Real applications launched from the ui wouldn't use this. Also a way to launch it properly for the required cases would persist (e.g. keeping the --desktop_file_hint but making it optional). There might be considerations if this could be allowed always or just in developer mode.
* Provide a sophisticated launcher that takes a binary only and finds/generates a .desktop file to do the real thing. Something like "launch ./somebinary". This could perhaps create a confined app environment on basedir or CWD and allow passing -u|--unconfined to run the binary unconfined for various purposes (system apps, quick-debugging etc).
Also a combination of the above would be possible.
description: | updated |
description: | updated |
affects: | qtmir → qtmir (Ubuntu) |
Changed in qtmir (Ubuntu): | |
status: | New → Confirmed |
Changed in qtmir (Ubuntu): | |
status: | New → Confirmed |
I vote for the latter approach, as this would mean keeping our production code free of backdoors. Creating a temporary environment in which to launch a binary so it's regarded as an app by UAL / QtMir's ApplicationManager does not seem too complicated.
I know the SDK team was considering something similar to allow remote debugging, that work could be leveraged there.