Forgot to reply on-list; storing this in the archives for posterity (some future person might want to know about looking up gir files/converting typelib files/generating docs from them).
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Amy <mathematical.cof...@gmail.com> Date: 4 September 2012 15:32 Subject: Re: Help for an extension: Call a function when switch workspace in overview To: Bazon Bloch <bazonbl...@arcor.de> On 4 September 2012 15:00, Bazon Bloch <bazonbl...@arcor.de> wrote: > Is there a way how to find out which connect events are available? I > searched /usr/share/gnome-shell/* for a file including "workspace-switched", > but found nothing. Ahh, I remember going through the same pain as you when I first started developing extensions! Here is stuff I've learned along the way: A good place to look is documentation online, if you can find any. Most of it lives on developer.gnome.org. For example: * http://developer.gnome.org/st/stable/ for imports.gi.St * http://developer.gnome.org/shell/unstable/ for imports.gi.Shell (<-- I found that one hard to find, since it's in unstable instead of stable!) These pages will give lists of signals available for each class. If you can't find the documents (Meta doesn't have them), you can look in the *.gir files, which define how the C functions map to the JS functions for each library (imports.gi.Meta, imports.gi.Gtk, ...). You can find the signals quickly by grepping for 'signal': grep 'glib:signal' Meta-3.0.gir # will give me a list of signals in the Meta library. # ... (lots of signals) <glib:signal name="workspace-changed" when="last"> </glib:signal> # ... (lots more signals) When you find the signal you're interested in you can go into the .gir file and see what it is owned by (in this case Meta.Screen), so you know that if you want to listen to the 'workspace-changed' signal you will have to connect to a Meta.Screen (global.screen in this case). In terms of finding the gir files, I found some in /usr/share/gir-1.0. I think some of them only appear there if you install either the relevant -dev package, or perhaps a gir package. Some of them I couldn't find at all (e.g. Meta, Shell, St) because they are considered "private", but you can find these here: * /usr/lib/gnome-shell (Shell, St) * /usr/lib/mutter (Meta) However these are .typelib files, which is like a compiled version of the gir. To conver the .typelibs into readable .gir files you can use g-ir-generate /usr/lib/mutter/Meta-3.0.typelib > Meta-3.0.gir (the g-ir-* tools are provided by package gobject-introspection on ubuntu; I think you can install them from a repository on the web somewhere too). Sometimes g-ir-generate will complain about not being able to find various other typelibs, for example if you try to generate Shell.gir from the typelib: g-ir-generate /usr/lib/gnome-shell/Shell-0.1.typelib ** (g-ir-generate:9599): ERROR **: failed to load typelib: Typelib file for namespace 'St', version '1.0' not found Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped) In this case it's trying to find St-1.0.typelib, which is in /usr/lib/gnome-shell, so you can include it using --includedir like so (it also needs to find Meta-3.0.typelib in /usr/lib/mutter, I think by default just /usr/lib/girepository-1.0 is included): g-ir-generate --includedir=/usr/lib/gnome-shell --includedir=/usr/lib/mutter /usr/lib/gnome-shell/Shell-0.1.typelib and then it will work. (Note - there are many .typelib files in /usr/lib(64?)/girepository-1.0, more than there are .gir files in /usr/share/gir-1.0). Then if you like you can even generate HTML documentation from the .gir files (but if you can find documentation online use that instead, it looks better): mkdir mutter-docs g-ir-doc-tool Meta-3.0.gir -o mutter-docs Then turn the output (yelp files) into HTML: yelp-build html mutter-docs And then load index.html in a browser and you have some basic browsable documentation, complete with a list of signals (so if you click on the Meta.Screen page it has a list of signals you can connect to, although it is a bit sparse on explanation). PS - re closing a window through the hover X button in the overview, you'll probably have to monkey patch that. See /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/workspace.js - the code to do with this.closeButton, and in particular, WindowOverlay._closeWindow appears to handle the closing of a window when the button is clicked. PPS if you really did want to look up a list of signals, you can do it with GObject, but I think it is much much more helpful to browse the documentation/girs: const GObject = imports.gi.GObject; GObject.signal_list_ids(GObject.type_from_name('MetaScreen')).map(function (id) { return GObject.signal_name(id); }); where signal_list_ids lists all the ids belonging to class MetaScreen, and signal_name(id) gets the name for that signal (documentation: http://developer.gnome.org/gobject/stable/gobject-Signals.html). Hope that helps! (And the mailing list is a great way to ask questions when you get fed up of wading through documentation, I still do heaps of that :)) > Entering global.screen.connect in looking glass didn't help either, and > unfortunately, I wasn't successful in finding the source code for > global.screen (that's what I tried as a beginner.) > > (Specific I would be interested in the events: > * show overview > * close a window through the hover x-Button in the overview) > > > _______________________________________________ > gnome-shell-list mailing list > gnome-shell-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list > _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list gnome-shell-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
