Re: Recompiling libgnome-shell.so

[Simon McVittie <simon mcvittie collabora co uk>]

On Mon, 2016-10-03 at 19:15 +0200, Bob Andrew wrote:
> My original goal was to modify the appDisplay.js file to change
> the number of columns of the application overview. I suppose that
> rebuilding the whole gnome-shell package is a bit of an overshot for
> that purpose, especially since it would need to be done after every
> update. Is there any plan to include a middle way which would allow
> users to implement these JavaScript changes without going through
> recompiling/rebuilding?

Not that I'm aware of. You have modified the GNOME Shell source code to
make it more convenient for you; the price you pay for that is that you
now have to either keep using your "forked" version and stop receiving
"upstream" improvements, or reapply your changes every time there is a
new upstream version.

(This is the same process that's used by every OS distribution that
applies non-upstream patches to software, whether their patch is a bug
fix, a new feature, a change to make the software conform to their
policies, or whatever. It's also the same process used by projects like
MATE and Cinnamon when they fork GNOME software. Your changes are
probably a lot smaller than theirs, but the principle is the same.)

>  Maybe the idea is that this kind of tweaking
> should be done exclusively through extensions?

Yes. Extensions have a wide-ranging ability to "monkey-patch" bits of
the Shell's internals.

    S