Re: Launch bash script using desktop icon?

[Mariano Suárez-Alvarez <msuarezalvarez arnet com ar>]

Hi!

On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 18:02 +0100, Esther Parrilla Endrino wrote:

> I have created a desktop icon in my $HOME/.gnome-desktop folder that
> launches a bash shell script, the code inside the *.desktop file is
> something like:
> 
> [Desktop Entry]
> Name=dummy 
> Comment=dummy Script 
> Exec=/home/foo/script.sh
> Type=Application
> 
> When I double click the icon in my desktop it does nothing!
> I have tried too to create the icon not manually but using the desktop
> options to create a new launcher and it does not work either...

I have just created a test.desktop file in my ~/Desktop directory, whith
the following contents:

        [Desktop Entry]
        Encoding=UTF-8
        Version=1.0
        Type=Application
        Exec=/home/mariano/test.sh
        TryExec=
        X-GNOME-DocPath=
        Terminal=false
        Name[en_US]=test
        GenericName[en_US]=
        Comment[en_US]=

and an executable file /hime/mariano/test.sh with the contents

        #!/usr/bin/bash
        exec gnome-about
        
and clicking on the desktop launcher Works™. 

A remark: 1) the Terminal field should be false, unless the script will
run _in_ a terminal: in your case, your script ends with an 
“exec some-app” line, which ends the shell, and makes the containing
terminal to end, too; indeed, you clearly do not want to have a terminal
while your app is running. 2) your script should probably not rely on
having the current working directory set to anything useful, and
explicitely set it doing a “cd /here/is/where/I/want/to/be” before
exec'ing the java app. Saying “-classpath .” obviously depends on the
current directory; I don't think this is your problem, but it wont
hurt ;)

HTH,

-- m

PS: I am running GNOME 2.5.HEAD, and some things have changed, but they
should not matter much, I guess.


-- 
Mariano Suárez-Alvarez <msuarezalvarez arnet com ar>