Tray-icon researches

[rusty-snake]

There are many tray-icon standards:

• XEmbed.
  • is legacy
  • uses X
  • has no wayland support therefore
  • independent on DBus
• A Unity/Ubuntu special standard
  • not implemented in Xfce, KDE, ...
  • applications cann't relay on it
• StatusNotifierItem (freedesktop) (org.freedesktop.StatusNotifierWatcher)
  • actually there is no implementation by Apps or DE (has xfce one?)
  • was submitted by kde based on the one below
• KStatusNotifierItem (KDE) (org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher)
  • is used by sway, GNOME via shell-extension, KDE, ...
  • KDE has maybe some additional additions
  • I tested under GNOME for now
  • this it the one I focus below
• ...

Which dbus rules are requiered for KStatusNotifierItem?

• dbus-user.talk org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher
  • This is unsafe and allows sandbox escapes
  • This is always required
• dbus-user.own <APP-ID> (or dbus-user.own <Apps Indicator Service> but I never saw it)
  • This is required by apps using libayatana (e.g. transmission-gtk)
• dbus-user.own org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-<PID>-<ID>
  • This is required by apps strictly following the spec (e.g. Qt based)
  • YES YOU READ IT RIGHT, <PID>!! fuck yeah!
  • The pid is part of the name, meaning you need to add dbus-user.own org.kde.* (obviously unsafe)
  • The pid inside the sandbox is used, this means
    • These names are a bit stable if it is for example the second process in the sandbox which registers a tray-icon
    • Names can conflict and apps likely don't expect a other program with the same pid

[rusty-snake]

The pid is part of the name, meaning you need to add dbus-user.own org.kde.* (obviously unsafe)

The alternative is to add hundreds of dbus-user.own org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-<PID>-<ID> commands. However, this takes endless to start firejal.

with open("/proc/sys/kernel/pid_max", "r") as pid_max_fd:
    pid_max = int(pid_max_fd.read())

with open("snw.inc", "w") as snw_inc:
    snw_inc.write("dbus-user.call org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher=org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable.*\n")
    snw_inc.write("dbus-user.call org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher=org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.*\n")
    snw_inc.write("dbus-user.call org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher=org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher.*@/StatusNotifierWatcher\n")
    for pid in range(pid_max):
        for i in range(9):
            snw_inc.write(f"dbus-user.own org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-{pid}-{i}\n")