Hi, (1) I suppose xdg-desktop-menu is designed for 3rd. party app. to install the .desktop file. Which is the preferred directory to install 3rd. party app.'s .desktop file? Should it preferably be /usr/share/applications/?
I noted a while ago that /usr/share/applications/ was used. However, xdg-desktop-menu is now installing into /usr/local/share/applications/, probably because /usr/local/share/ exists on the systems. Also, this is from Desktop Menu Spec.: http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/menu-spec-latest.html Install Locations If an application is intended to be installed by root on a system wide basis then /usr/share is recommended to be used as value for datadir and /etc/xdg is recommended to be used as value for sysconfdir. In case the /usr/share hierarchy is not writable it is recommended to use /usr/local/share as value for datadir instead. XDG Base Directory Specification, though, shows this: http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-0.6.html If $XDG_DATA_DIRS is either not set or empty, a value equal to /usr/local/share/:/usr/share/ should be used. This is what xdg-desktop-menu is doing: If $XDG_DATA_DIRS is NULL, xdg_system_dirs is set to: /usr/local/share/:/usr/share/ The first writable directory is used. So, if /usr/local/share/ is found, it is used, instead of /usr/share/! It turned out that a distribution wanted us to always install the .desktop file into /usr/share/applications/. Why xdg-desktop-menu doesn't appear to follow the Desktop Menu Spec.? Is it because the directory content in /usr/local/share/ can potentially shadow that from /usr/share/? (If so, the .desktop file installed to the user home directory also shadows the system directory and can be very confusing in some cases.) I think I'm choosing to define XDG_DATA_DIRS=/usr/share/:/usr/local/share/ when running xdg-desktop-menu to get it to do what I need to do at this time. I want to be better informed if my action can cause some drawback in the desktop experience!? A few other questions... (2) Any idea why if this directory, /usr/share/desktop-directories/, isn't found on a system, xdg-desktop-menu will not work? Is that just a bug? xdg-desktop-menu: No writable system menu directory found. (3) Is it a possibility to support running xdg-utils during "debian/rules build" time and in %Install section of rpm spec. file? Thank you! -- Daniel Yek. _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
