update-desktop-database location

[Christian Westgaard]

On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:51:25 +0100, Matthias Clasen <mclasen at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 15:34 +0100, Christian Westgaard wrote:
>> On Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:14:03 +0100, Matthias Clasen <mclasen at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Mon, 2006-02-06 at 15:46 +0100, Christian Westgaard wrote:
>> >> http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html
>> >>
>> >> Does not specify the location of the update-desktop-database script.
>> >>
>> >> I currently test for XDG support like this:
>> >>
>> >> if update-desktop-database --help >/dev/null 2>&1; then
>> >>
>> >> But when update-desktop-database is not in $PATH, I'm out of luck.
>> >>
>> >> Is there a better test? A specced one?
>> >>
>> >
>> > Well, common sense suggests to look in /usr/bin. Does that really needs
>> > to be explicit in the spec ? Come on.
>>
>> Actually on SuSE update-desktop-database is not
>> located in /usr/bin nor in $PATH.
>>
>> One might like to say that this means SuSE does
>> not follow the standard, but one cannot since:
>> The standard does not state explicitly that update-desktop-database must be in $PATH
>> (nor that it must be in a specific location, like /usr/bin or $XDG_BIN_DIRS )
>>
>
> I personally think its silly to put a binary thats supposed to be used
> by third-party apps out of $PATH. Maybe that should be made explicit in
> the spec then.
Yup, that's what I think.

> I don't think inventing yet another env var for this will
> make things any better.
I agree. Which is why I put it in parentheses :)


-- 
Christian Westgaard <chrisw at opera.com>
Developer and Project Manager
Opera Software ASA