Dock remains invisible if launched before any other application

[lilacpixel]

Describe the bug
When nwg-dock is launched from the sway configuration file and no other applications are open, the dock remains invisible, even after one or more applications are launched. Removing the existing dock instance with pkill and reloading the sway config will cause the dock to appear as normal.

Additionally, if nwg-dock is launched in the sway configuration file with -x, the dock remains invisible but takes up a very large portion of the screen (much larger than the actual dock size).

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Add nwg-dock launch command to sway configuration file (i.e. exec_always nwg_dock).
2. Log out and log back in.
3. Launch any application that draws a window.

Expected behavior
The launched application should appear in the dock.

Screenshots

Desktop:

• Fedora Linux 38
• go 1.20.3
• gtk-layer-shell 0.8.1-1

Sorry to be back so soon! This one is very easy to work around with pkill -f nwg-dock && nwg-dock -r -x, so please don't feel any sense of urgency ☺️ Thanks so much!

[nwg-piotr]

Could you show me the command you start the dock with in the sway config file? Also: which dock version do you use?

[lilacpixel]

The launch command I typically use is exec_always nwg-dock -mb 6 -r -x -nows. Removing -x will make the huge gap at the bottom of the screen disappear (so it looks like the dock isn't running at all), but the behavior is the same in that the dock never appears after an application is launched. It looks like -nows is the culprit here—removing that flag will render the dock visible even when no applications with a window are running, so it appears correctly from the start, takes up the appropriate amount of space, and updates when an application is added or removed.

This is using the latest release, 0.3.4.

[nwg-piotr]

I have no idea what to say. It works as expected on my side. BTW: turning exclusive zone on (-x) only makes sense if you use the dock in the Ubuntu-like way, e.g. like this: