Improved support for debugging GUI apps: Copy Environment Feature

[softworkz]

Problem

When debugging a GUI application this is typically supposed to run inside a desktop environment.

In an SSH session there's no such desktop environment, so the usual scenario you want is

• You're logged into the target machine through a different connection having a desktop session
  e.g. remote desktop (rdp/vnc) or the virtual display of a VM
• In order for the debugged app to appear in that desktop session, a number of environment variables need to be set
  The usually required ones are:
  • DISPLAY
  • WAYLAND_DISPLAY
  • DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
  • XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
  • XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
  • XAUTHORITY
  • (and others)

The latter one (XAUTHORITY) is of special interest, because it often changes per session (but there may be others as well).

Proposed Solution

Introduce a Copy Environment From feature.

It would work like this:

• Add a CopyEnvironmentFrom property to the debug profile
• User can enter the name of a process
  which will be something like: Xwayland, gnome-shell, plasmashell, ksmserver, xfce4-session, sway, wayland-desktop, kwin_wayland, kwin_x11, Xorg
• Before launching the debugger, the extension executes a script over ssh which
  • finds the id of a running process of that name (and is owned by the same user)
  • executes cat /proc/{pid}/environ
• Then, the extension will add all those variables (except those which are explicitly specified in the profile) to the debugger launch command