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alexsokolek

Member

Registered: 2025-10-23

Posts: 3

Integration with XFDESKTOP

This was originally posted on the forum.mxlinux.org. It was suggested that I could do better submitting to forum.xfce.org, so, here I am.

Hi - I have a quad boot system with Windows 11, Ubunutu Noble, Debian Bookworm, and MX Linux Liberetto 23-6-3 AHS 64 Bit, the topic of this post. I have a self written tool to save and restore desktop configurations. It records the shortcut's contents (app.desktop), positions (gio metadata position ), icon. and permissions (permitted to launch). Previously, with GNOME Desktop, I used gio get metadata position to retrieve the position of the shortcut position and gio set to restore the shortcut position.

Now, I see that I need to edit a .yaml file and integrate with XFDESKTOP in order to retrieve/set positions. I have several questions:

1.) When restarting XFDESKTOP, how do I know when it is done? Do I just wait an arbitrary length of time, or is there some kind of interface exposed that I can use?

2.) When stopping XFDESKTOP, what is the best way to do that, and, again, how long do I wait for it to shut down?

3.) What happens when the new position of a shortcut conflicts with the position of an existing shortcut?

4.) What do I do with the other information in the .yaml file? I notice there are several pieces of information. I suspect that I can trundle through the file, editing the positions accordingly, and copying what I'm not interested in. Does that make sense?

5.) Are there any other questions that I have missed?

Thank you for your attention to this topic. I look forward to hearing from you about this.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,315

Re: Integration with XFDESKTOP

With respect to directly editing the yaml file, its not supported. See: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfdesktop/-/issues/373.

To answer your questions...

1.) When restarting XFDESKTOP, how do I know when it is done? Do I just wait an arbitrary length of time, or is there some kind of interface exposed that I can use?

Probably when the process is running (pgrep xfdesktop). There is no built-in mechanism to identify this.

2.) When stopping XFDESKTOP, what is the best way to do that, and, again, how long do I wait for it to shut down?

xfdesktop -Q

...when the command returns you'll know its stopped.

3.) What happens when the new position of a shortcut conflicts with the position of an existing shortcut?

Not sure actually, it would be an interesting test though.

4.) What do I do with the other information in the .yaml file? I notice there are several pieces of information. I suspect that I can trundle through the file, editing the positions accordingly, and copying what I'm not interested in. Does that make sense?

See bug report linked above. Best to leave it alone as editing of the file is not supported.

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alexsokolek

Member

Registered: 2025-10-23

Posts: 3

Re: Integration with XFDESKTOP

OK - I';m not supposed to edit the .yaml file. Thanks fo your reply. What ither options are there.? In GNOME, I can call gio set metadatra position, or something like that, but that does not seem to be possible in this case. Ideas, please? I'm looking to go in the front door here. Something other than manually  creating and moving the shortcuts, that is. :-)>

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,315

Re: Integration with XFDESKTOP

Since the yaml file shouldn't be edited while xfdesktop is running, you could quit xfdesktop, make the changes, then restart it again. You'd need to do some extensive testing to see if this will work though - I haven't tried anything like that personally.

xfdesktop doesn't use gio metadata to store icon positions.

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alexsokolek

Member

Registered: 2025-10-23

Posts: 3

Re: Integration with XFDESKTOP

That's exactly what Microsoft CoPilot Suggested. That I stop xfdesktop, edit the .yaml file, and restart xfdesktop.I see no reasonable alternatives, so I am considering doing that. I am just being cautious postinig these questions.

That leaves me with one, new, question... When I restart xfdesktop I notice that it hangs on to the shell session that started it. This problem goes away if I launch in the background (&). What about nohup. Is that indicated? (I notice that nohup leaves a line or two of text on stdout/stderr, so I wonder.)