Gnome desktop and mime stuff help

["Michael A. Peters" <mpeters mac com>]

I'm searching for docs on the "right way" of doing Gnome desktop/mime  
etc. entries.

I know that the "old way" (before update-desktop-database) still seems  
to work, either by accident or by design apps that don't use that  
command in %post still seem to function as intended.

I'm trying to package something that has (at least one) a broken  
Makefile, as part of make install it want to cat stuff onto /etc/magic, / 
etc/gnome-vfs-mime-magic, amongst other things that cause to fail when  
built from a non root user - that I *think* are actually handled by  
update-desktop-database in the %post script.
I do have a problem though -

man update-desktop-database
No manual entry for update-desktop-database

:(

Since it looks like I have to fix Makefiles anyway to build the package  
as an rpm, I'd like to try to do things the right way - I don't think  
even under gnome-2.4 that cat >> /etc/gnome-vfs-mime-magic was correct  
(which is what the Msakefile wants to do).

http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/desktop-file-utils

Not very helpful.
Is there a helpful guide somewhere?

--
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