[Suggestion] Use Appindicator instead of own tray icon implementation

[mrprobot]

Ubuntu is maintaining the extension "Appindicator" upstream as Gnome removed the legacy tray. I guess it's easier to implement an upstream solution then maintaining your own and TopIcons Plus is unmaintained, which I think is the inspiration for your solution. There also seem to be efforts making libappindicator available outside Ubuntu so other Distros can use it as well.

"Hi. On Do 01 Mär 2018 18:26:34 CET, Jan Niklas Hasse wrote: > It's not used outside ubuntu AFAIK Debian: https://packages.debian.org/stretch/libappindicator1 The libappindicator package in Debian is unmaintained / orphaned. Currently, there are efforts taken by me, Martin Wimpress and others to make libappindicator available outside of Ubuntu under a new upstream umbrella [1,2]. Fedora: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/libappindicator openSUSE: https://software.opensuse.org/package/libappindicator No clue about there status. Mike"

ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator#74

https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator

[TingPing]

There also seem to be efforts making libappindicator available outside Ubuntu so other Distros can use it as wel

It has been available on nearly every mainstream distro for many years. The problem isn't that it isn't packaged the problem is there is no upstream development.

[jonian]

Hi @mrprobot, @TingPing. I'm planning to remove the tray icon implementation when GNOME drops support.

For now, you can disable it from the settings and use the appindicators extension.

[TingPing]

I'm planning to remove the tray icon implementation when GNOME drops support.

That happened a year ago.

[jonian]

Not yet:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/blob/master/src/shell-tray-manager.c
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/blob/master/src/shell-tray-icon.c

[TingPing]

Code may be there, but GNOME 3.26 disabled it and 3.30 is about to release. So it has been gone for nearly a year.

[jonian]

Well then I will drop support when the code is not there anymore.
That code (tray manager) is used to implement the tray icons https://github.com/hardpixel/unite-shell/blob/master/unite%40hardpixel.eu/modules/topIcons.js#L38.