Packaging guidelines updates

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 09:20 +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-08-27 at 08:33 -0500, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> 
> > 2. I also proposed an addition to the PackagingGuidelines regarding
> > desktop applications. Specifically, I proposed to FESCO that all
> > packages containing GUI applications should also include a properly
> > installed %{name}.desktop file. Ideally, this file will come from
> > upstream, but if it is not included by default, the packager should add
> > it as a Source#:. For the purposes of this rule, a GUI application is
> > defined as anything which draws a window in X and then operates from
> > within that window. If you do not feel that your GUI application needs
> > a .desktop file, you need to rationalize its absense with a comment in
> > the .spec file.
> 
> 	Are you saying that, as a rule, all applications which display an X
> window should appear in the applications menu? If so, I think that's a
> little odd - there are plenty of applications out there that don't
> warrant a menu entry - e.g. zenity, gnome-screenshot, xclock etc.

No, only applications which display an X window _and_ run from that
window. xclock doesn't really meet that criteria, since it cannot run
from that window. xclock is really a cli application that displays an X
window as a result of being executed with certain flags. ImageMagick is
another obvious example of an application that can open X windows, but
does not run or interact from that window.

And if you think your GUI application doesn't need a .desktop file, you
just need to put a comment in the spec file stating why.

~spot
-- 
Tom "spot" Callaway: Red Hat Senior Sales Engineer || GPG ID: 93054260
Fedora Extras Steering Committee Member (RPM Standards and Practices)
Aurora Linux Project Leader: http://auroralinux.org
Lemurs, llamas, and sparcs, oh my!