[Portland] xdg-menu copies .desktop file

[Bastian, Waldo]

>On 4/6/06, Lubos Lunak <l.lunak at suse.cz> wrote:
>> > >  What's the point of having xdg-menu at all then?
>> >
>> > xdg-menu is how the app's postinstall and uninstall scripts
>> > will create and remove the menu item, of course.
>>
>>  Then there's no point in using a separate prefix for the package. If
the
>app
>> comes as rpm, it can simply have the .desktop file already
>> in /usr/share/applications.
>
>My impression of the FHS was that only applications
>supplied by the distribution maintainer could do that.
>Third party apps are intended to reside in /opt as described here:
>http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-
>2.3.html#OPTADDONAPPLICATIONSOFTWAREPACKAGES
>And I think users who install a commercial app
>which is provided as an rpm probably do prefer it to go
>in /opt/vendorname/appname rather than mixing
>in with the rest of the system.
>I could be wrong, but that was my impression.

It seems that is Lubos' point: Currently xdg-menu copies the .desktop
file to /usr/share/applications and mixes it with the rest of the
system.

Symlinking would keep the two a bit more separated.

Something else I wonder about is whether xdg-menu should be used for
system components (stuff shipped by the distro's) as well or only for
"third party" apps. If so, how to distinguish between the two... the
same open source packages are often used in both roles. (Provide some
autoconf magic that uses xdg-menu, with an option for distros to
override?)

Waldo Bastian
Linux Client Architect - Channel Platform Solutions Group
Intel Corporation - http://www.intel.com/go/linux
OSDL DTL Tech Board Chairman