should provide an IsUnityRunning() dbus method

[Sebastien Bacher]

Having a IsUnityRunning() interface provided by unity over dbus would be useful for software-center or other applications that will need to check on what desktop they are running to adapt their behaviour.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

definitively needed, right.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Note that it should be in the panel itself, not the service as the service can live even it unity panel crashed.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

You don't need an actual dbus function call for this, do you? Just check if the name 'com.canonical.Unity' is owned.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Not sure, I think Didier had concerns about that, Didier?

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Indeed, that doesn't work, the name is owned by the unity-panel-service IIRC. This doesn't mean that the graphic display is there (for instance, if you do disable it after launching it in ccsm, or metacity --replace, or if it crashes…) So the method should be answered by the panel, not the service (or the service should ping the panel…)

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Perhaps you actually want something like isInitialised() or isReady()... this would cope with start-up delays, possibly crashes (yes, these happen).

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

I don't understand why checking if com.canonical.Unity is owned doesn't work. That name is *not* owned by the Unity panel service.

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

@Didier, you are thinking of com.canonical.Unity.Panel.Service, not com.canonical.Unity.

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

Completely agree with Alex. Check if com.canonical.Unity is owned. If
this doesn't work for some reason, then that's the thing we need to
fix.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

I didn't know that one, ok, make sense then :) Thanks guys!

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

For reference:

The relevant DBus method is org.freedesktop.DBus.NameHasOwner(in s
name) -> out b has_owner