[RFC] A trivial change for DESKTOP_ENTRIES (take 2)
Stephen Montgomery-Smith
stephen at missouri.edu
Thu Jul 14 16:57:51 UTC 2011
Pav Lucistnik wrote:
> On 2011/07/14 00:57, Jung-uk Kim wrote:
>
>> links.diff, metalink-editor.diff, tome.diff:
>> - Add static desktop files to work around DESKTOP_ENTRIES limitations.
>
> This is a step backwards and I'll oppose it.
>
I am beginning to get a clearer picture of what is going on. This
"desktop_entries" stuff is all rather new to me, and I think that
yesterday I wasn't understanding it.
So entry 4 in Desktop Entries serves two purposes. First, it tells us
what program we are running, complete with path names and flags if
needed. Secondly, it is used to generate the filename of the desktop
entry. I assume that the filename of the desktop entry is unimportant,
and is used only internally by Gnome or whatever.
But what is important is that the name of the filename stays the SAME.
So if I deinstall some software, and then reinstall, and then the
filename of the desktop entry changes, then suddenly there is the
potential for stuff to stop working.
And this "not working" will typically be at the user level, not the
system administrator level. And Joe Average user who doesn't actually
install the ports shouldn't be expected to read UPDATING.
So one fix would be to keep everything in bsd.port.mk as it is, and just
change the instructions in pkg-message in x11-wm/compix to use
compizmanager instead of compiz-manager.
But maybe it would have been better to have had one more entry in
DESKTOP_ENTRIES that was the actual filename of the desktop entry. But
I can also see why people didn't do that, because it would be opaque to
the users.
But using the program name for the filename didn't work, because of the
possibility of spaces and slashes and "..". So Pavel had to change it
to remove spaces and such like. But this had the unintended consequence
that users would find their desktop icons suddenly not working. And now
the filename for the desktop entry is inconsistent across different
computers, depending upon whether people installed the ports before or
after the change to bsd.port.mk.
So Jung-uk Kim's scheme of partially reversing Pavel's changes will
create more havoc for some people, and less for others. And my initial
complaint that bsd.port.mk was changing names without telling me was
based on my not understanding what all this desktop entry stuff was all
about.
Sorry for the long ramble. Am I understanding this correctly?
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