Extending the Greeter

When the user starts Builder, they are greeted by the Ide.GreeterWorkspace. This is a window containing a series of Ide.Surface’s to display various options for opening a project.

In the following image, you can see the Ide.GreeterSurface showing personal projects as well as suggested new projects. Along the bottom of the window are buttons providing various ways to open an existing project.

../_images/greeter.png

Adding a Surface

The Ide.Workspace API provides a method to add an additional Ide.Surface for your extension.

class MyWorkspaceAddin(GObject.Object, Ide.WorkspaceAddin):

    def do_load(self, workspace):
        if type(workspace) != Ide.GreeterWorkspace:
            return

        my_surface = MySurface()
        workspace.add_surface(my_surface)
        workspace.set_visible_surface(my_surface)

Adding a Button

You can add a button that switches to a custom surface, or even opens a dialog.

# 'my-surface-name' should match the name of your widget (See Gtk.Widget.set_name())
button = Gtk.Button(label='click me', visible=True, detailed_action_name='win.surface::my-surface-name')
greeter_workspace.add_button(button, 100) # 100 is sort priority

Performing Long Running Actions

If you need to perform a long-running action, such as cloning a repository or expanding a template, then you should notify the workspace. Surround your long running operation with calls to greeter_workspace.begin() and greeter_workspace.end(). This will cause the workspace to prevent certain changes by the user.

Adding Project Sections

The list of projects in the greeter are broken into sections. You can add a section to the greeter using greeter_workspace.add_section(). The section should implement Ide.GreeterSection so that it can respond to user input and selections.