Re: gnome-shell and custom desktop files

[Aurélien Naldi <aurelien naldi gmail com>]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2011 at 09:57:02AM +0100, Aurélien Naldi wrote:
>> * 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.

Many java applications are just provided "as is" without integration,
or without integration for linux.
I agree that the dev or distributor should be the one doing it, but if
he doesn't, why should it be hard for a user to do it himself (and
then suggest the dev to integrate it)

>> 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.

Some guidelines are provided here:
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/ApplicationBased
It helps from the developer point of view at least.

Unfortunately the java side of things is not so convenient for this:
the java WM sets the class name by herself (even if some tricks exist
to try and fool it but I would rather not rely on this):
http://elliotth.blogspot.com/2007/02/fixing-wmclass-for-your-java.html

the WM_CLASS I get is:
WM_CLASS(STRING) = "sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer", "name-of-the-main-class"

matching on the second name does not work, and if I give the first
name to my .desktop file, the application does not even get launched

Did anyone here have this working for java applications without having
to rely on java-gnome (which defeats the point of using a
"cross-platform" language) ?

Thanks for your feedback.

-- 
Aurélien Naldi