Re: install app in users homedir

[Hongli Lai <h lai chello nl>]

Stefan Kost wrote:
> hi hi,
>
> At first I am new to this list, but I am reading/posting to
> gtk-app-devel,gtk-devel,.. already.
> We develope an music composer application called buzztard [1] that usees gnome
> feature if the are available.
>
> I have some problems with installing the application for development purposes
> into my homedir. My username if 'ensonic'. I configure my app with
> '--prefix=/home/ensonic/myapp' ($HOME would be okay as well). Now the probelm is
> how to make all the gnome services aware of that. Is it possible at all.
> I happilly collect all these things and it agreed write a small docbook article
> for gnome developer site if I get enough feedback.
>
> 1.) installing a .desktop file: How do I notify the gnome panel menu that there
> is a new app. When I install to /opt/gnome the menu entry is there after
> restarting gnome.

I had been working on this kind of installation issues for months for my 
project. Installing .desktop files is a mess right now.
You can install .desktop files to either /usr/share/applications, or 
~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications. The item may or may not show up 
immediately; I'm not sure what's the cause of this bug (it's not whether 
FAM is running).
However, this does not work correctly on GNOME 2.6+! There is no way to 
install .desktop files to the home folder with GNOME 2.6+. At least, not 
without a hack which involves editing a custom 
~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications.info (or something) file.
It is not possible to install to ~/.local/share/applications. GNOME 
upstream does not support the menu spec. RedHat GNOME partially does, 
but their patches are not merged upstream.


> 3.) gconf-schema files. gconftool seems to insist installing to /opt/gnome/...

For local GConf schema installatin, use this:
export GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE=
gconftool-2 --makefile-install-rule "filename.schemas"

Yes, settting GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE is intential. The idea is to change it 
from NULL to an empty string ("").

However, due to bugs in GConf or gconf-editor (not sure which one is at 
fault), the new keys may or may not show up immediately in gconf-editor. 
In the latter case, you'll have to restart GNOME before they show up. 
Your app can still use the keys though; they just don't show up 
correctly in gconf-editor.