recommendations for install of applications and update of MIME cache

[Carnë Draug]

Hi

I have an application that as part of its install target (using make),
installs a desktop entry file with "desktop-file-install".  This
application handles files of specific MIME types (listed on the desktop
file) and so it uses the "--rebuild-mime-info-cache" option.

The problem with this is that during uninstall, the file
"share/applications/mimeinfo.cache" is left behind and distcheck
complains about it.

I was wondering if this tool is really to be used as part of the
installation of the application.  Or is it meant for downstream packagers
with package managers running them after the installation?  What is
the recommendation for applications?  Should they leave it up for
downstream packagers?  Expect that users building from source will
update the mime database themselves?  Is there some other cleaner way
to do this (I saw some changes on other projects where they replace the
"--rebuild-mime-info-cache" with a separate call to "update-desktop-database",
but why is that?).

If it makes any difference, the application I am asking is GNU Octave,
which has a bug about it [1].

Thank you,
Carnë

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?44404