Add System Notification Support

[SDLBugzilla]

This bug report was migrated from our old Bugzilla tracker.

These attachments are available in the static archive:

• Example notifications API working on Linux (dbus) (testnotification.patch, text/plain, 2016-11-12 12:18:49 +0000, 6894 bytes)
• Example notifications API working on Linux (dbus) (testnotification.patch, text/plain, 2016-11-12 13:51:22 +0000, 10091 bytes)

Reported in version: HG 2.1
Reported for operating system, platform: Other, All

Comments on the original bug report:

On 2015-07-27 09:30:06 +0000, wrote:

Some systems have notification server which the application can use. These are available on OSX, iOS, Linux, Android, etc.

Add a simple notification message api similar to the SimpleMessageBox such as:

SDL_ShowNotification(SDL_Surface* icon,
Uint32 type,
const char* title,
const char* message)

On systems that do not support notifications or the notification server is not running this can be faked similar to the message box based on SDL creating a window which will fade in and fade out after a certain time.

On 2015-08-07 11:33:09 +0000, Amit Jain wrote:

HI
Any updates for this defect/feature ?
Is there any plan to add such Notification API in SDL ?

On 2016-11-12 12:18:49 +0000, wrote:

Created attachment 2612
Example notifications API working on Linux (dbus)

I have created a quick patch which is working on Linux in dbus. This could be converted over to libnotify as well which would then work on other platforms that do not use dbus for notifications. But as libnotify uses dbus there was no reason to put in support at the moment.

The idea would be to have two interfaces one simple interface which is just to display a quick notification similar to a messagebox. The second one (not implemented yet) where you retain a pointer to an SDL_Notification and can call update on it allowing updating progress notifications etc.

I am also thinking about the best way to implement the Icon. The dbus notification protocol excepts both a filename and also raw image data (but some platforms might not).

On 2016-11-12 13:51:22 +0000, wrote:

Created attachment 2613
Example notifications API working on Linux (dbus)

On 2017-08-12 23:30:02 +0000, Sam Lantinga wrote:

Ryan, do you think this is a generally useful addition for SDL 2.1?

[icculus]

I think this would be neat. Linux, Mac and Windows all have a notification interface now, and of course iOS and Android do, too. Let's toss this into 2.0.20, since we're probably spending all of 2.0.18 cutting down open bugs instead of building new things.

[icculus]

Bump this to SDL3.

[smcv]

For the Linux implementation, it would be best if this was container-friendly by trying both org.freedesktop.portal.Notification and org.freedesktop.Notifications, in some order (try one, and if it fails with a D-Bus error, try the other).