Hi all, As the subject indicates, all I'm trying to do is get ratpoison (a window manager) added to GDM's session list. As this is Debian, this seemingly trivial issue has become inordinately difficult to resolve. Hopefully, people here have the appropriate authority or knowledge of Debian/freedesktop.org policy needed to actually get this resolved.
Most window managers seem to simply add themselves by placing a .desktop file in /usr/share/xsessions. Currently, the ratpoison window manager registers itself though the Debian menu system. A package called menu-xdg seems to transform Debian menus into freedesktop.org menus, and also auto-generates .desktop files in /var/lib/menu-xdg/xsessions which seems to be appropriate for an session chooser. The original bug against ratpoison is #563959 (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=563959) in which the package maintainer tells me to file a bug against GDM. The bug I filed against GDM is #564071. In which the GDM maintainer says the only place to register for xsessions is in /usr/share/xsessions and that the Debian menu system mechanism is broken (there is a response to this from the ratpoison maintainer in ##563959). To further confuse issues, it appears that GDM did use to scan /var/lib/menu-xdg/xsessions for .desktop files, before support for it was removed in bug #464179 (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=464179). In addition KDM *does currently* scan this folder for xsession .desktop files. Also, I suspect neither package maintainer is going to be quick to budge. I also note that neither upstream KDM or GDM appear to be aware of the /var/lib/menu-xdg/xsessions folder. This appears to be a Debian-specific change. Furthermore, I cannot find any reference to specifications that would cause /var/lib/menu-xdg/xsessions to be scanned for .desktop files nor what caused KDM (and once GDM) to be modified to look for these files. Although presumably these was a good reason. Looking forward to a response, Francis Russell -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-desktop-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org