Why is /usr/share/gnome-shell/js missing?

Question

I'm trying to debug a gnome-shell extension, but I don't seem the have the folder /usr/share/gnome-shell/js. I'm on fedora 20 with gnome 3.12. I couldn't find it when I had gnome 3.10 either. Were the files moved? Is there a package that I'm missing?

Answer 1

The js files are now embedded inside libgnome-shell.so.

gresource list /usr/lib/gnome-shell/libgnome-shell.so

You can create a simple script to extract the resources:

#! /bin/sh

gs=/usr/lib/gnome-shell/libgnome-shell.so

cd $HOME/gnome-shell-js

mkdir -p ui/components ui/status misc perf extensionPrefs gdm

for r in `gresource list $gs`; do
  gresource extract $gs $r > ${r/#\/org\/gnome\/shell/.}
done

And then use:

GNOME_SHELL_JS=$HOME/gnome-shell-js gnome-shell --replace

To check the changes.

Be careful, when you exit the replacement shell, the previous one becomes unresponsive.

This was taken from Gnome blog post.