[bug #6056] Duplicate application launching

[nobody]

=================== BUG #6056: LATEST MODIFICATIONS ==================
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=6056&group_id=99

Changes by: Richard Frith-Macdonald <rfm@gnu.org>
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 20:30 (GMT)

------------------ Additional Follow-up Comments ----------------------------
If someone runs an application from the command line, it should start up a new 
copy of the application.  That is what the NextStep, OPENSTEP, MacOS-X, and 
normal unix convention is.  Having default behavior be to exit if a copy of the 
application is already running would be inconsistent and confusing to users ... 
ie it would be the introduction of a bug.



=================== BUG #6056: FULL BUG SNAPSHOT ===================


Submitted by: stefanu                 Project: GNUstep                      
Submitted on: Sun 10/19/03 at 19:08
Category:  Gui/AppKit                 Severity:  3                          
Bug Group:  Bug                       Resolution:  None                     
Assigned to:  alexm                   Status:  Open                         

Summary:  Duplicate application launching

Original Submission:  If I launch an application, that is already running, i 
get an alert panel asking me about renaming, ignoring or aborting. I would 
expect that the existing application instance will be activated instead. So the 
behaviour should be: If there is already running application, activate it, if 
there is not, launch it.



Btw. are there any situations, where one would like to have two instances of 
one application open? How are they compared to the usual situations?



>From the point of user, I consider this to be a bug. Moreover, it is another 
>additional confusion.

Follow-up Comments
*******************

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 20:30         By: CaS
If someone runs an application from the command line, it should start up a new 
copy of the application.  That is what the NextStep, OPENSTEP, MacOS-X, and 
normal unix convention is.  Having default behavior be to exit if a copy of the 
application is already running would be inconsistent and confusing to users ... 
ie it would be the introduction of a bug.

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 20:22         By: CaS
I just looked at Apples latest NSWorkspace documentation, and see that, as of 
MacOS 10.3 they have a new method to launch applications, which provides more 
fine control over the way that the application is launched ... perhaps we 
should be implementing that?



-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 20:10         By: stefanu
I think, that this should be fixed in application startup, not in NSWorkspace. 
What if someone runs the application from command line?



To allow multiple launches, there should be some commandline argument, like 
--GSAllowMultipleInstances. If the argument is not specified, application will 
contact its running instance and will exit immediately.



Alert should be removed, because we decide whether to run it or not by using 
the argument.



-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 20:02         By: CaS
I just looked at Apples latest NSWorkspace documentation, and see that, as of 
MacOS 10.3 they have a new method to launch applications, which provides more 
fine control over the way that the application is launched ... perhaps we 
should be implementing that?



-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 19:52         By: CaS
I'm still confused about what the problem is supposed to be.

When I use the NSWorkspace method to launch an application which is already 
running, it does not attempt to launch a duplicate copy (though neither does it 
make the existing copy active ... I think it should - a simple message to the 
running application to activate it should fix this).



When I launch a new copy by directly excuting it (rather than via the 
NSWorkspace API) it *does* launch a duplicate copy ... and I think that's 
correct behavior ... certainly it's what NeXT/QApple do too, and makes sense to 
me ... I can't see a reason for preventing people having multiple copies of an 
app runing if they want to.



The alert panel raised when launching duplicate copies is a hack we added many 
years ago, before the NSWorkspace code was implemented, and before gopen and 
GWorkspace were available to allow users to launch apps using the NSWorkspace 
API.  I think this could probably be removed now ... so when you launch 
duplicate apps intentionally, you should not longer get a warning, and the new 
copy of the app should just start up normally.



So ... I see two things to be fixed:

a) activate running app if we call the api to launch it.

b) remove the alert pan el when multiple copies are run.



but I don't actually know of any occasions where we get duplicate copies of an 
app launchd and we shouldn't.



-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 19:04         By: esersale
Beeing there, you could take a look also at the bug #4410 that is probably 
correlated :-)

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 10/27/03 at 18:46         By: alexm
Matt Rice and I have been looking at the duplication issue too. We have a patch 
that fixes it, and currently I'm Thinking Really Hard about whether it's the 
Right Thing.

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat 10/25/03 at 12:00         By: ratmice
Alex M. applied something in cvs for me which I believe should 

fix this.

where connecting to the running application would fail in some

cases (see ChangeLog)



though i'm not seeing the ordering front of the clicked on application and 
haven't tried the keyboard modifier, I'm guessing those cases should be handled 
in GWorkspace

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri 10/24/03 at 07:13         By: CaS
I'm not sure what context you are referring to (ie what application launching 
mechanism you are talking about).



Certainly I like the behavior the NeXT workspace used to haver, where double 
clicking on an application in the workspace would simply bring the app windows 
to the front if the app was already running, but a keyboard modifier would 
force the launch of another copy of the application.

I see that as an issue for the workspace manager ...

If it uses the NSWorkspace method launchApplication:shoiwIcon:autolaunche: the 
behavior should be the one we like.  Are you saying that there are 
circumstances where this method does not work properly?

Or are you talking about some other situation entirely?






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