Re: gnome-shell and custom desktop files

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2011 at 09:57:02AM +0100, Aurélien Naldi wrote:
> I am having some trouble with the gnome-shell dock, more specifically
> with the mechanism used to match windows to .desktop files. Indeed, in
> gnome-shell we need a .desktop file to add an application to the
> "dock" but the facility to create these files have been removed.
> Arguably, most users won't need to build their own as applications (or
> distributors) are supposed to provide them, yet we still have some
> corner cases:
> 
> * manually installed applications: I rely on some manually installed
> applications (especially java ones), which do not provide a .desktop
> file. Making one is easy enough (yet I think GNOME should provide (or
> reuse) a GUI for this).

No, the developers should provide the desktop file. There is a GUI for
making them, but it is wrong to expect users to ever create such a file.

> Once the .desktop file exists and is installed in the proper place,
> the shell can launch the application, but the dock does not associate
> the window to the .desktop file. How can I solve this?

I guess something is missing. No idea. Maybe StartupWMClass / needs
StartupNotify=true.

> * custom options for existing applications: I use separate profiles
> for gnome-terminal, firefox, google-chrome. These applications provide
> a command-line switch to select the profile, but the opened window is
> then associated to the "main" desktop file instead of the custom one.
> I guess the source of the problem is similar to the previous one.

WMClass needs to be different IIRC.

> I am asking this not only as a user who would like to make his
> everyday life slightly more confortable, but also as a developer (of
> java application) who would like to improve integration with the
> environment, without too much headache...

No idea if we have documentation for this. If not, we should.

-- 
Regards,
Olav