Subject: bug#12932: 24.2; Installing GNOME .desktop file to incorrect location

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:09:39 -0500

[email-masked] wrote:

> When compiling and installing Emacs, the GNOME .desktop file is
> installed to /usr/local/share/applications; however, according to the
> documentation[1],

Reference [1] seems to be missing AFAICS.

>  the correct locations are: /usr/share/applications and
> ~/.local/share/applications.

Thanks for the report. My initial reaction, without having read the
Gnome docs, is that this is a Gnome bug (obviously this won't be a
helpful response for you). If I compile something with --prefix=/foo, I
get annoyed if it installs files outside /foo.

Installing in /usr/share/applications is a definite no-go, because then
we could clobber a pre-existing emacs.desktop belonging to the system.
I supposed we could perhaps only install here if there was not already
an emacs.desktop, but this does not seem like a great solution to me.

Installing in ~ is pointless, because it only works for the installing
user (doubly bad if this is root). You could of course make your own
symlink there to the /foo file, so perhaps what Emacs does now is a
reasonable compromise.