Relative paths in .desktop files

[Michael Thayer]

Hello,

I maintain the Linux version of the VirtualBox Guest Additions (drivers
for integration of hosts and guests) and recently tried to make the
installation process a bit nicer for users.  The Guest Additions are
packaged in a shell script which is supplied on a virtual CD image which
is mounted in the virtual machine on demand, and in current released
versions the normal way of installing them is to open a terminal and run
the script.  I tried to set things up so that the user could just click
on an icon to start the installation process; my first instinct was to
create a .desktop file for this, but I immediately ran up against the
problem that all paths in .desktop files have to be absolute, which
obviously isn't an option here.

So of course, the question is what the prospects are of getting this
changed (I'm also open to suggestions about better ways).  And since we
are drifting towards the old AppFolder thing here anyway (which I know
has been raised every so often here in the past, but never seems to have
gone anywhere), what about some convention which would let one put
a .desktop file in a directory and have it be a "default" executable for
that directory?

Just to be clear, since this is not the most important problem we have
to solve I won't be able to spend a lot of time on it, but if someone
can give me good enough pointers I might find a bit of time to write a
couple of patches on my own time out of personal interest.

Regards,

Michael
-- 
ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG   Michael Thayer
Werkstrasse 24                     VirtualBox engineering
71384 Weinstadt, Germany           mailto:michael.thayer at oracle.com

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