Request for clarification on menu/file spec

[Thiago Macieira]

Jeremy White wrote:
> The whole problem is when you say 'try $XDG_DATA_DIRS', what
>exactly does that mean?  I'm trying to write a single .desktop file;
>do I write it to every directory listed in $XDG_DATA_DIRS?  Do I write
>it just to the first directory, or do I (my personal favorite) write
>it to the first writable directory in the list?
>
>Note that I'm actually not waiting on this; my implementation is done
>and works.  My concern is that I want to improve the specification so
>that others can find it simpler to do this in the future.

A self-contained package should not install stuff outside its prefix. So, 
if the user says it should install under /opt/appname, there should be 
nothing in /usr. That's what I would expect, at least.

Now, if you want to have the menu entry show always, you should add it 
to /usr/share/applications. If XDG_DATA_DIRS does not point to /usr at 
all, it's because the user chose that way.

You'll probably need to make your application be instead a script that 
sets PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH and other variables, as necessary.

But note that, as I said, it may be difficult to interoperate in the 
future if you run an app that expects the system to find stuff that is 
outside XDG_DATA_DIRS (e.g., systray app telling the systray to show icon 
"iconname").

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
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