Comment 17 for bug 754334

I think this bug is the same problem I have with adding my eclipse start script to the launcher. I have eclipse extracted in a local home folder, and I created a simple bash script which just goes to that directory (via 'cd') and runs the executable. Running this from any console works (I've added the script's location to my PATH), and when the app initially shows up in my launcher it soon changes/switches to another launcher and the initial one disappears. Permanently adding either of these two launcher entries to the bar works, but neither functions as expected (actually starting up the application).

I don't think this problem is specific to Netbeans or any other application: the basic problem is we have no documentation on Unity that allows us to create custom launchers. Even the sparse documentation I've found in various threads online points to looking at the ~/.local/share/applications or /usr/local/share/applications folders in order to copy already existing .desktop files. Neither of these locations exist. The location /usr/share/applications contains .desktop files, but these look to be the default files that each application installs and are not the actual files related to the launchers actually on my system.

Where are the files related to the unity launchers?