Support Mir about peek HOT 11 CLOSED

Hey folks,
I work on Unity8 and Mir. Screenshotting is something we have basic support for, the mirscreencast utility shows that. We are lacking in API to allow more advanced screenshotting utilities like peek however.

To test mirscreencast, install a recent Ubuntu and add the "unity8-desktop-session" package. You should be able to choose between Unity7 and Unity8 in the login screen from then on. Bring up Unity8, and then from command line mirscreencast will work - but as root-only!!

But we need to add API to allow users to screenshot their session without a root password. For security reasons, allowing any application to screenshot whenever it likes is a risk, so we need to mediate that (probably a prompt to the user asking if it is ok, for the first time). These are things we need to do, before Peek will work nicely.

I've logged a bug with Unity8 to track this effort: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity8/+bug/1666902
You'll need to wait until that bug is resolved before this ticket can be attempted.

Thanks for the interest, it would be great to get Mir support in your awesome app!
-G

from peek.

@phw just to mention another option for "setting up Mir to test" - you can run a simple Mir server on your X11 desktop: https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mir-team/miral/trunk/view/head:/getting_and_using_miral.md

You'll still want to validate with Unity8, but the more familiar environment is helpful in the early stages.

from peek.

Definitly another thing to consider :) I haven't researched how Mir handles Screenahots, yet, but will do.

from peek.

Does anybody here now how and if Mir handles screenshots? Is it possible to plug into this somehow, e.g. by a DBus service or something?

from peek.

from peek.

from peek.

Ok, got it, there is a "mirscreencast" utility. Should have the options we need, see

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mir-team/mir/development-branch/view/head:/src/utils/screencast.cpp#L470

Now the annoying part is probably to actually set up Mir somehow to test :(

from peek.

Thanks @gerboland

from peek.

@gerboland Awesome to hear from you. Yes, the security issue is probably the harder thing to solve. I am a bit surprised that Gnome Shell offers a screenshot API on Wayland without any security related implementation, but they probably just wanted to get existing functionality going before tackling this.

I commented on the launchpad bug

from peek.

Given the recent annoucements around Mir and Unity I personally don't think Mir will stay around for the desktop. I will not invest any development time on this myself and will close this issue unless there is some sign that Mir will continue to be a thing for the desktop and there is some interest in Mir support for Peek.

from peek.

@phw you may well be right. I'm hoping to be in a position to clarify later this week.

from peek.