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Using the CLI frontend, xfce4-panel --add="invalid plugin name" provides no output and returns 0

Submitted by j.l..@..il.com

Link to original bug (#14444)

Description

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):

Version: 4.12.0

Edited by Yousuf Philips