[Suggestion] Make ayatana appindicator optional

[rubyFeedback]

Hey folks,

I am trying to compile: mate-control-center-1.28.0

from source, on linux, official tarball release.

When I extract the archive and then do:

./configure --prefix=/usr

It fails via:

configure: Buidling against Ayatana AppIndicator. checking for ayatana-appindicator3-0.1 >= 0.0.13... no 
configure: error: Package requirements (ayatana-appindicator3-0.1 >= 0.0.13) were not met: No package 
'ayatana-appindicator3-0.1' found

First: you have a small typo, "Buidling" should be "Building".

But more importantly ... could we make this check optional? I am not sure how necessary the AppIndicator is. In fact, I have not even been able to find the source easily.

I compiled all other mate-desktop components so far:

Reporting the installed versions of the mate-desktop components:

  Mate-Desktop:             1.28.2
  Mate-Utils:               1.28.0
  Mate-Applets:             1.28.1
  Mate-Common:              1.28.0
  Mate-Control-Center:      
  Mate-Keyboard:            1.28.0
  Mate-Media:               1.28.0
  Mate-Mixer:               1.28.0
  Mate-Notification Daemon: 1.28.3
  Mate-Weather:             1.28.0
  Mate-Panel:               1.28.4
  Mate-Power-Manager:       1.28.1
  Marco:                    1.28.1
  Mate-Screensaver:         1.28.0
  Atril:                    1.28.1
  Eom:                      1.28.0
  Pluma:                    1.28.0
  Engrampa:                 1.28.2
  Caja:                     1.28.0
  Caja-extensions:          1.28.0

mate-control-center is the only troublemaker now. It would be nice if a simple "./configure --prefix=/usr" could suffice. Right now I seem to need some lib-appindicator thingy. Could this be made optional, if it makes sense?

[lukefromdc]

Right now it's possible to build against either Ubuntu's libappindicator or against ayatana appindicator using the build option below at ./autogen.sh
--enable-libappindicator=[no/auto/yes]
You probably have on or the other installed but might need a -dev package for it to be found. If you have neither, a lot of packages won't be able to show notification icons in the tray. "indicator" is the newer tray system, the older legacy tray system (mate-panel supports both) uses GtkPlug and GtkSocket, which have been deprecated for many years as they don't work in wayland. The older system has the application itself draw the icon and the menus for the tray item,and the icon is in a window drawn by the application and embedded in the panel applet's window using xembed via GtkPlug and GtkSocket.

In the newer indicator system the panel applet (either notification area or indicator-applet, the latter being Ubuntu's method) draws the icons and menus, and the application passes data to it over the indicator library.

An option to not use the tray at all would have to be routinely tested both ways, would be rarely used, and right now the team is too small to add to the maintainance load.