[RFC/PATCH] git-gui: add a .desktop file

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: May 12, 2011, 10:02 UTC
Message-ID: <20110512100202.GF28872@elie>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.02.1105112205450.14343@dr-wily.mit.edu>

From: Todd Zullinger <tmz@pobox.com>

Most X desktops use files following the Desktop Entry Specification for menu entries. Provide a .desktop file for users and distros to install in the system menu to make git gui easier to find.

Caveats: this patch does not include Makefile rules to actually
install the .desktop file; they can come later.  Such Makefile rules
would need to change the Icon= line to avoid hardcoding a /usr
prefix.

[jn: removed GenericName and added RevisionControl category]

Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
---
Anders Kaseorg wrote[1]:

Show 6 quoted lines

> From https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/git/+bug/781454 (under, you 
> know, some interpretation):
>
> git-gui could install a /usr/share/applications/git-gui.desktop, like this 
> one: 
> http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=git.git;a=blob;f=git-gui.desktop;hb=HEAD

That's a good idea.  How about something like this, to start?

Installing to /usr/local/share/applications or /usr/share/applications is not right for a program that is being installed for an individual user. I suppose $HOME/.local/share is a good default in that case. Is a makefile supposed to check ifeq ($(prefix), $(HOME)) to take care of that?

xdg-utils includes an xdg-desktop-menu helper which supports a --user / --system option that will presumably install to the right place, and it is even nice enough to run update-desktop-database when done. Unfortunately, it lacks DESTDIR support, so I don't think we can use it.

The xdg-desktop-menu documentation suggests installing icons in some centralized place with xdg-icon-resource. The supported icon formats are xpm and png.

So this is rough, but I still think including it would be an improvement in the current state. Thoughts? Bugs? Improvements?

Thanks to Todd for writing the desktop file in the first place. I hope I haven't broken it too much.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/626442

 git-gui.desktop |    8 ++++++++
 1 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 git-gui.desktop

diff --git a/git-gui.desktop b/git-gui.desktop
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..019ee8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/git-gui.desktop
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+[Desktop Entry]
+Name=Git GUI
+Comment=A graphical interface to Git
+Exec=git gui
+Icon=/usr/share/git-gui/lib/git-gui.ico
+Terminal=false
+Type=Application
+Categories=Development;RevisionControl;

-- 
1.7.5.1