Bug 1309681

Summary:	Custom menu items ( applications ) not working properly in RHEL-7.2
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Reporter:	jigar <jraising>
Component:	gnome-shell	Assignee:	Florian Müllner <fmuellner>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	7.2	CC:	cww
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2016-11-17 20:25:23 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description jigar 2016-02-18 13:12:37 UTC

Description of problem:

Has the behaviour of Appdirs changed in RHEL-7.2? Custom menu items only works if the .desktop files are placed under ~/.local/share/applications .Using <AppDir> in .menu file for specifying the desktop entries is not working properly. The item is only clickable but does not open the desired application

How reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1) put the gnome-applications.menu file in ~/.config/menus
2) Place the custom .desktop files are placed under ~/.local/share/applications
3) it works with RHEL-7.1 but does not work with RHEL-7.2

Actual results: The menu item is just clickable and does not open the application

Expected results: The menu item should open the desired application

Comment 2 Florian Müllner 2016-03-04 14:29:42 UTC

(In reply to jigar from comment #0)
> Has the behaviour of Appdirs changed in RHEL-7.2?

Yes, it is no longer used for the "main" application view (<super>a). As the apps menu reuses the underlying code for launching applications, this does affect the extension as well.


> Custom menu items only works if the .desktop files are placed under 
> ~/.local/share/applications

More precisely:
An "applications" directory in $XDG_DATA_HOME or any directory listed in $XDG_DATA_DIRS.


> .Using <AppDir> in .menu file for specifying the desktop entries is not
> working properly. The item is only clickable but does not open the desired
> application

We can make this work again in the apps-menu extension, however those apps:

 - will not show up as search results in the overview
 - be shown in the "main" application view
 - be recognized by the system to handle URL schemes
 - be listed as options for opening files from the file manager

So in general, including the custom directory in XDG_DATA_DIRS is much preferred over using the AppDir element in the .menu file.