.desktop files [Was: Google Summer of Code]

> On Tuesday, February 7, 2012 09:42 CET, Fred Kiefer<fredkiefer@...>  wrote:
>> On 07.02.2012 09:21, Sebastian Reitenbach wrote:
>>> Another thing I'd really like to have is some more cross desktop integration, for example,
>>> allowing .desktop files, used in KDE and others,  to work. I'd really like to define Firefox or
>>> something similar as my default browser. (until Vespucci is production ready ;)
>>
>> We already once had a Google Summer of Code student to work on cross
>> desktop integration. Sadly not much came from that.
>> I remember writing .desktop support ages ago. The file specification may
>> have changed in between, most certainly it has, but it should be really
>> easy to update our file generation to match the current standard. What
>> is currently broken?
>
> Well, I have a couple of .desktop files around on my GWorkspace Destop. Double clicking
> them, doesn't do anything. I'd expect them to start the application configured in Exec=, or open the
> URL from URL=, and use the icon defined in Icon= ...
> but nothing happens when I click on such icon.

>> As for specifying a default browser, this should be as easy as to write
>> a GNUstep wrapper, that is just a .plist file and to copy it to where
>> make_services will find it. There must already be a lot of these
>> wrappers out there, where do we collect them? Maybe we should set up
>> some space in our source code repository to collect them?
>
> They are in GWorkspace apps_wrappers subdirectory. But this approach generally has a flaw:
> For how many applications do we want to create wrappers, when/where do we stop? ;)
> We obviously cannot do so for every application. Further, the paths to the application can be on
> different places on different OS, for example /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin ...
>
> On the other hand, many applications install a .desktop file in /usr/local/share/applications/
> (at least which is the path for me on OpenBSD), and icons too. Packages that do that then run
> update-desktop-database from the desktop-file-utils package on install. Afterwards it shows
> up in the users menu, under the defined categories.
>
> IIRC, the Makefiles support creation of .desktop files, from the info taken from the App bundle.
>
> AFAIK, there doesn't exist something the other way around, allowing other application to create
> an App Wrapper automatically. Even if that would exist, you'd still have to get others to make use of
> it, which I think is then the harder part.
>
> I'd also really like to have an applications menu in GWorkspace, built from the information from those
> .desktop files in /usr/local/share/applications, that would allow me to browse all installed applications
> and just start them from the menu ;)
>
> Supporting this really standard stuff would prevent us from creating/maintaining a truckload of
> Apps Wrappers. I actually created some of those apps wrappers for about 20 or so applications
> but Riccardo refused to add them to the Apps wrappers, he said, this is not a kitchen sink, and
> it should only contain really common used apps. Which I understand and is fine with me.
> But on the other side, creating and maintaining own apps wrappers, is also a bit cumbersome.