Several Gnome dialogs/modals are not shown on Sway session

[peterrus]

• I've run a search on the existing bug reports to make sure I'm not filing a duplicate (you can use the search box at the top left corner)
• I've read the Regolith documentation and didn't find any relevant topic

Describe the bug
Gnome seems unable to show certain modal/dialog windows. Such windows are often used for confirming certain choices. Examples:

• gnome-session-quit --logout: The default command that is run when the default 'logout' key combination pressed. Should show a confirmation dialog. The dialog does not pop up so I am unable to log out of a session. (Mentioned earlier: https://github.com/orgs/regolith-linux/discussions/876#discussioncomment-6722839)
• When changing display settings gnome-settings should show a popup with a timeout to automatically revert in case the use can no longer see their display. The popup never shows and the settings are neither persisted across reboots nor reverted when the timeout expires.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Logging out

• Run gnome-session-quit --logout
• No confirmation dialog is shown, you can not logout (WORKAROUND: you add the --no-prompt flag that skips the confirmation dialog).
• Nothing gets printed to the terminal, return code is 0.

Changing display settings

• Change display configuration in gnome-settings (Change resolution or monitor layout)
• No confirmation dialog is shown (the one with the timeout that automatically reverts display configuration when user doesn't confirm)
  • Interesting sidenote: The configuration isn't restored to the old values even though no dialog can be shown. I guess the dialog is responsible for the countdown and the subsequent signal to return the configuration to the old values. However when rebooting the system the screen configuration doesn't seem to be persisted, which means you need to setup your layout after each reboot.
• Nothing gets printed to the terminal.

Expected behavior
That the dialogs are shown. This is important because their absence renders basic functionality broken (Logging out, setting display configuration, etc).

Installation Details

• Regolith Install Stage: release-3_2
• Regolith Version: 3.2
• Host OS: Clean fully updated install of Ubuntu 24.04 to make sure it reproduces.

Additional context

As @SoumyaRanjanPatnaik mentioned in https://github.com/orgs/regolith-linux/discussions/876#discussioncomment-6722839:

Btw I think I figured this out. gnome-session-quit is supposed to open a dialog for all the : Logout, Rebootand Shutdown. But the gui for that is probably written in a version of GTK that doesn't support sway. ...

[SoumyaRanjanPatnaik]

My current leading theory is that these dialogues are part of the gnome-shell (gnome-flashback in the case of X11). It's most definitely not a GTK issue (I take my words back haha). I had grossly underestimated how tightly coupled the gnome ecosystem is 😅

[SoumyaRanjanPatnaik]

We'd probably need to implement these dialogues ourselves.

[peterrus]

I see! For the logout dialog (as an example) you could use something like swaynag but that wouldn't be a viable option for dialogs from gnome-settings of course. Forking gnome-settings and re-implementing those dialogs might be get old real soon :p

At the risk of sounding too presumptuous, but: Since these 'basic' things are not working should the Sway session still be marked as stable? I can imagine a less savvy user getting quite lost in the fact that the default log-out keybind (for example) doesn't do anything. Marking it as 'not fully on par with the i3 session' or something of the like for now might save you a lot of questions from new users.

Edit: Nonsense: The default keybindings (Mod+Shift+e) work fine, and use in fact swaynag. It's just the 'Logout' item in Ilia that doesn't work (which probably comes from Gnome).

[kgilmer]

I've repro'ed the gnome=session logout not working in sway. The package is not x11 specific so this is a bug IMO. Either the logout desktop action should work or it should be removed. Off the cuff I think abstracting logout in some shell script that will work in both X11 and Sway is feasable, so it seems that we can make this work..

.../share/applications$ gnome-session-quit 
.../share/applications$ dpkg -S logout.desktop
regolith-default-settings: /usr/share/applications/logout.desktop

[peterrus]

Thanks @kgilmer, I also noted that its sibling shutdown.desktop has some weird behavior. The first time I run it nothing happens, the second time I run it the system gets shut down without asking for confirmation. I suppose this might also be related to the dialogs not showing in some way.

By the way I just noticed that I reported this issue against 3.1 which should of course have been 3.2, which is what I am actually running. Apologies for the typo.