When trying to add a plugin to the panel via the command line / console / CLI frontend, if an invalid value (i.e., not an actual plugin name) is passed as an argument, there is no output and the command returns 0 (success). Examples: xfce4-panel --add=nonexistant xfce4-panel --add=foo xfce4-panel --add="not real" xfce4-panel --add="" xfce4-panel --add= What happens: no output, no visible changes in the panel, echo $? returns 0 (success) What was expected: error message in output specifying that such plugin name was not found, no visible changes in the panel, echo $? returning non-zero (failure) Without an error message to diagnose, it is unclear what the expected plugin name should be (foo vs. foo-plugin vs. xfce4-foo-plugin). This was tested in latest Xubuntu 16.04.4 amd64, with xfce4-panel --version reporting "xfce4-panel 4.12.0 (Xfce 4.12)", but I am assuming it went unreported and thus unfixed until now. There is too much GLib obfuscation for me to find the actual source of the defect, but here are a few potentially relevant locations (the following code snapshots were all taken at commit https://github.com/xfce-mirror/xfce4-panel/commit/ca42838b6f396c5ffa01a37bb891341f517125e2): - https://github.com/xfce-mirror/xfce4-panel/blob/master/panel/main.c - lines 308 to 313 - https://github.com/xfce-mirror/xfce4-panel/blob/master/panel/panel-dbus-client.c - lines 139 to 169 - https://github.com/xfce-mirror/xfce4-panel/blob/master/panel/panel-dbus-service.c - lines 255 to 282
The first code portion you point to suggests that errors are handled and the commandline should output them. But it's strange, I can reproduce your bug also with 4.13.x.
I followed the debugging instructions (https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/debugging) and reproduced the problem in another system (also latest Xubuntu 16.04.4 amd64, XFCE 4.12). Doing these steps resulted in the stdout/stderr output below each step: $ apt-get install xfce4-genmon-plugin (no output) $ xfce4-panel --add= (xfce4-panel:5220): xfce4-panel-WARNING **: The plugin "" you want to add is not known by the panel $ xfce4-panel --add=foo (xfce4-panel:5220): xfce4-panel-WARNING **: The plugin "foo" you want to add is not known by the panel $ xfce4-panel --add=genmon (xfce4-panel:5220): xfce4-panel-WARNING **: The plugin "genmon" you want to add is not known by the panel At this point I manually navigated to the "Add new plugin" menu through the GUI in the hopes that it would update/trigger some D-Bus stuff to recognize the newly added plugin xfce4-panel(struts): 0x55dc55ae4070: top=26, start_x=0, end_x=1919 xfce4-panel(module-factory): reading /usr/share/xfce4/panel/plugins xfce4-panel(module-factory): reading /usr/share/xfce4/panel-plugins xfce4-panel(struts): 0x55dc55ae4070: top=25, start_x=0, end_x=1919 $ xfce4-panel --add=genmon xfce4-panel(external): register dbus path /org/xfce/Panel/Wrapper/9 xfce4-panel(module): new item (type=external-wrapper, name=genmon, id=9) xfce4-panel(external): genmon-9: child spawned; pid=12039, argc=8 xfce4-panel(application): saving /panels/panel-0: ids=true, providers=false xfce4-panel(external): genmon-9: child is embedded; 6 properties in queue So something is being detected and reported, just not to the command line frontend.
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