ui/popupMenu: Many properties declared as readonly unnecessarily

[AmionSky]

Many properties in ui/popupMenu.d.ts declared as readonly even though they are just regular properties. I understand that these (probably) should not be open to modification by anyone, but it causes issues with subclassing, where I can't assign to said properties in the constructor. Though there is workarounds for it (like using declare), I'm not sure if they should be readonly in the first place.

[schnz]

Do you have a use-case at hand?

Shouldn't these props be assigned in the constructor through a super() call? (maybe super._init()).

[AmionSky]

They are assigned, but cannot reassign them on a subclass. For example PopupMenuSection sets sourceActor to undefined via the parent constructor (since it does not pass any args to super). I wanted a subclass of it that make use of sourceActor but I can't assign to it by default.

But I have just used the declare workaround for the few properties that I needed, so it might not be important.

Some example code:

class PreviewList extends PopupMenuSection {
    declare readonly actor: St.ScrollView
    declare readonly sourceActor: AppIcon

    constructor(source: AppIcon) {
        super()

        this.sourceActor = source
        this.actor = new St.ScrollView()

[schnz]

Indeed, the API doesn't allow to pass the sourceActor via constructor. In that case, I agree that the readonly seems too strict. Although it is possible with the workaround you mentioned. Removing the declare could make this is a little more explicit: override readonly sourceActor: AppIcon and force the subclass to set the property.

I'd also be open to remove the readonlyattribute from the types.