Bad arguments for xwininfo

[crazygolem]

When right-clicking or double-clicking in some applications (e.g. nautilus, dia), the mouse pointer becomes a cross and you must click anywhere on the screen to continue doing anything.

E.g.: nautilus

1. Right-click on a file or directory
2. Select Properties

I traced the problem back to a call to xwininfo in decoration.js (l. 50):

id = GLib.spawn_command_line_sync('xwininfo -children -id 0x%x'.format(act['x-window']));

I suspect that act['x-window'] might be empty or undefined, as in facts the same behavior happen when I execute xwininfo -id 0x in the terminal (i.e. the command that is executed from the extension if act['x-window'] is empty).
However I don't know how to properly debug Gnome extensions and inspect their state, so I won't be able to help much more here.

System info

• Distribution: Arch Linux
• Gnome Shell: 3.14.3
• xwininfo: 1.1.3 (from package xorg-xwininfo 1.1.3-1)

[amitbha]

Same issue as in #1.
I used the log function and found the 'act['x-window']' was empty sometimes.
it's ok to check it before using

[Karmak23]

About the little cross problem, it took me ages to understand from where it came, but I encounter it many times a day.

The most cases where it happens is when hitting Control-R in evolution (to reply to an email). But not always : it can happen 10 consecutive times when evolution is open, or not at all if I relaunch it.

It just happened 15 minutes ago when I opened my gnome session and clicked on the firefox icon from the dock. Firefox didn't show, I had to click anywhere on the desktop for the window to appear. Closing it and reclicking on the icon didn't re-trigger the cross.

I can't reliably determine the conditions that can trigger it, but it's very annoying, to stay polite. It just interferes in nearly every kind of GUI interactions, in a non-deterministic fashion.

Now that I know where it comes from, I won't throw my computer through the window anymore. But if you have a way to catch any exception and avoid the cross, I will thank you a thousand times :-)

Version information:

• arch linux up-to-date
• thus GNOME version 3.14.2

[wilfm]

I don't have this issue with the on Fedora 21 Gnome Shell 3.14.3 - I probably need a copy of Arch for some other work I need to do, so will do a fix and test it once I have that.

[Karmak23]

I think a simple if (act && act['x-window'] != null) in https://github.com/wilfm/GnomeExtensionMaximusTwo/blob/master/maximus-two-wilfinitlike.gmail.com/decoration.js#L49 could do the trick. Not sure about the syntax though.

[deadalnix]

🎏

I'm facing a similar issue, and I'm as puzzled as you guys. Planting my flag here in case there is progress. Will update you if I have progress on my side.