No way to add desktop files at build time

[Michael Hall]

I would like my snap to copy the icon for it's .desktop file from a part's source into /setup/gui/ at build time, but there is currently no way to do this.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

I would like to copy the desktop file after it is build by the build system. It starts as a .in file and is merged with the translation .po files to create the final desktop. Then it needs to get copied to the location for Snapcraft after the build step.

[Zygmunt Krynicki (zyga)]

This should be done by snapcraft

[kevin gunn (kgunn72)]

wrt icon lookup discussion at sprint, this was recommended reading
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/icon-theme-spec/icon-theme-spec-latest.html#icon_lookup

[Lee Trager (ltrager)]

Instead of copying the files out of the source path it would be nice if snapcraft allowed you to specify the path to the icon and license by part. For example if I have a part called foo which contains the icon and license in its source I should be able to do something like

icon: $foo/icon.png
license: $foo/COPYIING

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Leo Arias (elopio)]

I tried using a link: setup/gui/keepassxc.desktop -> share/linux/keepassxc.desktop
That didn't work:

[('setup/gui/icon.png', '/home/elopio/workspace/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/prime/meta/gui/icon.png', "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'setup/gui/icon.png'"), ('setup/gui/keepassxc.desktop', '/home/elopio/workspace/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/prime/meta/gui/keepassxc.desktop', "[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'setup/gui/keepassxc.desktop'")]

[Sergio Schvezov (sergiusens)]

I am going to target this bug for desktop files specifically.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Tentative implementation at https://github.com/snapcore/snapcraft/pull/1010, feedback welcome!