Proposal: $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP and the xdg-* commands

[Simon Lees]

On 06/01/2015 04:21 AM, Jerome Leclanche wrote:
> Hi
>
> Just earlier a user encountered an issue with xdg-settings, which
> would complain about an "unknown desktop environment". Looked in the
> code and sure enough, it hard-checks for $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP and
> actually only implements kde, gnome and xfce. All other DEs are
> implemented with a "dispatch_generic" which would be suitable for any
> DE, really.
>
> Seeing as we have generic functions in all xdg-* commands, cant we
> merely check whether XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP is set at all, and if it is
> (and we dont have a specific function for the DE in question), use the
> generic one?
>
> Writing a new DE shouldn't require changing these tools. As long as we
> don't do nonstandard stuff, they should just work.
>
> J. Leclanche
I agree 100% here, I fixed similar issues with xdg-su and xdg-terminal 
under enlightenment, someone implemented xdg-open which added a check 
for the DE and because they didn't know they had to add actions to the 
others it broke everything else. xdg-su and xdg-terminal also just use 
xterm so they should just work regardless of DE. From what I saw when 
fixing enlightenment i'm pretty sure there is atleast 1 place where one 
of the other smaller DE's is still broken.

Cheers

Simon Lees