lens privacy feature does not work on all lenses

[Alan Bell]

In the system settings privacy area check the box to not return results from internet searches
Install unity-lens-github from the extras repo
Observe a fully functional github searching lens.

By default lenses don't do anything with the privacy flag. They have to be specially coded to look for it, and it is undocumented. There are lenses getting into the distribution that don't respect the flag.

Maybe the ARB should check lenses observe the setting before allowing them into extras.
Maybe the setting should be replaced with a more functional alternative that doesn't require lenses to be modified - so it won't send them global-search-change events so the lens *can't* send your global queries to the internet because it doesn't see them happening.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: unity 6.10.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-19.30-generic 3.5.7
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-19-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
Date: Fri Dec 7 23:02:08 2012
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-05-01 (220 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta amd64 (20120421)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-06-21 (169 days ago)

[Chris Wayne (cwayne)]

I could easily make the lens do nothing if the dconf key com/canonical/unity/lenses/remote-content-search is set to 'none' I suppose. Although I'm not sure if that key should apply to third-party lenses that don't do any local searches, and aren't shown in the home lens. If people disagree and think I should implement it, I'd be happy to

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

The fix should not require extra work from third-party developers.

[Alan Bell (alanbell)]

That is a very fair question and I have no idea what the answer is to it. I think the way the flag is worded a user would have an expectation that remote searching lenses would stop working - especially as it does currently apply to the default lenses when searching in the home lens or in the specific lens, and other lenses such as the loco portal lens stop working when the flag is set. Maybe we could get some design input as to what the expected behaviour should be.

[Michael Hall (mhall119)]

Adolfo, that is not possible, lenses and scopes are independent processes that can perform whatever actions they want. There is no way for the Dash code to restrict their access to the network.

[Chris Wayne (cwayne)]

Pushed the fix to scopes-packagers/ppa. It will hopefully go through the ARB quickly and get into extras repo

[Benjamin Kerensa (bkerensa)]

@Michael Hall:

Perhaps it should be a requirement that lenses and scopes have a string that checks Privacy setting to see if it is disabled and if it is then nothing over the wire. This seems like a reasonable requirement that the Development Community can offer as a specification or best practice and if its not followed it would have no chance of being shipped as a default lenses/scope?

[Alan Bell (alanbell)]

the setting has changed in 13.10, it is now a declarative part of the .scope file. Online searching lenses have to declare themselves as being online lenses by using the RemoteContent=true flag in the .scope file. If that is set then those lenses won't be queried when the privacy flag is set. This is now documented in the tutorial.
http://developer.ubuntu.com/scopes/tutorial/
Please note that the default is false which is bug 1250134 so that a lens author who does not include that line will automatically be assumed to be a local lens and will be queried when the flag is set to local results only - so by default online lenses will still ignore the flag - but it is now declarative and external to the code of the lens, so this bug is fixed in Saucy.