Flatpak: Hamster is not starting because of DBusActivatable=true in .desktop file on Ubuntu 20.04

[Johann-Tree]

I installed hamster via flatpak install org.gnome.Hamster on a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS. I also added it to favorites. But clicking on Hamster icon won't start the GUI. After some time I figured that the line
DBusActivatable=true
in file org.gnome.Hamster.desktop is the problem.
After removing it in a copy of that file saved to ~.local/share/applications/ the GUI starts!

[mwilck]

Which "Hamster icon" do you mean?

[Johann-Tree]

The Hamster icon which is provided by /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications/org.gnome.Hamster.desktop and shown in gnome shell when pressing the Super key and typing hamster. Same icon = .desktop-file is used when adding Hamster to Favorites.

[aquaherd]

A few days ago I tried this from alpine Linux latest-stable and int worked after invoking it once via flatpak run org.gnome.Hamster

DBus activation is one major feature of hamster and as such a must have if you want to use it from other clients.

See also: flathub/org.gnome.Hamster#2

[Johann-Tree]

I tried that but on Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS it's not working. After closing the Hamster GUI opened with `flatpak run org.gnome.Hamster` I cannot open it again when the line `DBusActivatable=true` is in .desktop-file.

[aquaherd]

Confirmed.

Note for readers from other distributions / desktops: OP means gnome desktop; here starting hamster fails, even when right clicking and asking for 'add' or 'overview'. Works under xfce4 on same operating system though. Did not check with most recent gnome 40/41, ubuntu ships 3.38 or so.

[Shahin-rmz]

Hello everyone.
same issue here
is there any solutions?

[matthijskooijman]

I've just tried this as well (recently switched from .deb package to flatpak) on Ubuntu 22.10 with Gnome 43.1, but it seems to work as expected here - I can open hamster using the icon in the gnome-shell "activities" menu as normal, at least after I opened it manually with flatpak run once (haven't tried a clean login yet).

On my system, the /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications/org.gnome.Hamster.GUI.desktop file does contain DBusActivatable=true like the original poster also shows (though my filename is different from the filename shown in #692 (comment), not sure if that's relevant, but maybe this makes the dbus ID different from the desktop filename and makes the DBusActivatable ineffective? Just guessing here, though).

For anyone that does have this problem, can you see what happens if you run gtk-launch org.gnome.Hamster.GUI (or gtk-launch org.gnome.Hamster if your desktop file is named like that) from a terminal? That should do the same as clicking the icon, but then from a terminal, maybe showing a meaningful error message.

[bbhtt]

Hello, can you please check and comment there flathub/org.gnome.Hamster#2 (comment)?

I don't think this is an upstream issue.

[matthijskooijman]

@bbhtt thanks, I have been testing with our own flatpak builds form this repo, it seems the flathub builds have some changes to rename the org.gnome.Hamster.GUI.desktop to org.gnome.Hamster.desktop, which would indeed break this (since the dbus name to activate is taken from the .desktop file name: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#dbus).

Also see #725 about using different ids in the application, I'm trying to disentangle them there (in a comment I'm going to post in a minute).