Slingshot Fails To Show Manually-Created .desktop Launchers

[Daniel Hobbs]

A fresh install of Elementary OS Luna (64bit). I have installed some applications manually using the following cli:

xdg-desktop-menu install /mnt/data/Downloads/Minecraft/buildcraft.desktop --novendor

This works in other DE (such as GNOME Shell and E17), but not in Pantheon. I have edited the .desktop file as per other bugs (removing the OnlyShowIn line, adding "Application;" to the Categories line, etc). I have copied the .desktop file to /usr/share/applications, and changed it's properties to chmod 644, all to no avail (rebooting between each change).

Here is one of the offending .desktop files:

[Desktop Entry]
Value=1.0
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Buildcraft
Comment=Minecraft 1.4.7 with Buildcraft Mod
Exec=buildcraft
Icon= /mnt/data/Downloads/Minecraft/minecraft.png
Categories=Application;Game
Terminal=true

Please advise how to get Slingshot to recognise manually-created .desktop launchers.

Other applications installed from apt-get are added no problem, so there must be SOME way to do it

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: elementary OS 0.2
Package: elementary-desktop 1.293-0~367~precise1 [origin: LP-PPA-elementary-os-daily]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-36.57-generic 3.2.35
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-36-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.1+elementary3~precise1
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: elementary_meta
Date: Wed Jan 23 20:00:24 2013
InstallationMedia: elementary OS 0.2 "Luna" - Daily amd64 (20121231)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: elementary-meta
SuspiciousXErrors:

ThirdParty: True
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Tigran Gabrielyan (tigrangab)]

My custom .desktop files do show up. Can you try again with the latest stable slingshot?

[Daniel Hobbs (mr-dhobbs)]

I am back running a fresh install of Luna 64bit. This issue still persists. I have even tried taking an existing (working) .deskop file, and only changing the "Exec=" line, but that still doesn't work.

An interesting issue, when I tried to find out the version of slingshot, I got this error:

$ slingshot-launcher --version
Unknown option --version
[_LOG_LEVEL_INFO 07:52:44.531678] Application.vala:77: Slingshot version: 0.7.4
[_LOG_LEVEL_INFO 07:52:44.531806] Application.vala:79: Kernel version: 3.2.0-52-generic
[_LOG_LEVEL_FATAL 07:52:44.550424] [GLib-GIO] This application can not open files.
[_LOG_LEVEL_FATAL 07:52:44.550477] Slingshot will not function properly.

Those lost two lines were in red text - could that be identifying the issue?

Thanks for any help

Daniel

[Tigran Gabrielyan (tigrangab)]

That happens to me, too, but my desktop files load. Can you check the file permissions?

Where I do have an issue is with Catalyst control center. Its categories are like so when installed:

Categories=GNOME;KDE;GTK;Qt;HardwareSettings;Settings;

With that, it doesn't show. But if I change the category to just Settings it will. Try playing around with the categories config, but I think what I have is a different issue.

[Jeremy Wootten (jeremywootten)]

Which apps are displayed is governed by etc/xdg/pantheon-applications.menu, which is installed by slingshot. You can get ibus-setup to appear by explicitly including it in e.g. the System Tools section of this file:

  <!-- System Tools-->
  <Menu>
    <Name>System</Name>
    <Directory>System-Tools.directory</Directory>
    <Include>
      <And>
        <Or>
          <Category>System</Category>
          <Category>Administration</Category>
        </Or>
        <Not>
          <Category>Game</Category>
          <Category>X-GNOME-Settings-Panel</Category>
          <Filename>debian-xterm.desktop</Filename>
          <Filename>debian-uxterm.desktop</Filename>
          <Filename>ibus.desktop</Filename>
        </Not>
      </And>
      <Filename>ibus-setup.desktop</Filename>
      <Filename>ubuntuone-installer.desktop</Filename>
      <Filename>ubuntu-tweak.desktop</Filename>
    </Include>
  </Menu> <!-- End System Tools -->

Or by adding the category "System" or "Administration" to ibus-setup.desktop

It would also be possible to add the Category "Settings" to the System Tools section of pantheon-application.menu, but this increases the number of applications appearing in this section significantly.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Slingshot because there has been no activity for 60 days.]