bug#30228: desktop files embedding full path

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Efraim Flashner <address@hidden> skribis:

> On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 03:58:51PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Efraim Flashner <address@hidden> skribis:
>> 
>> > the owncloud-client package includes an option to add a .desktop entry
>> > to $HOME/.configure/autostart/, which allows it to autostart when you
>> > log in to your desktop environment. Because the full path of the binary
>> > is in the .desktop file, it will always start THAT copy of
>> > owncloud-client, even if it is garbage collected.
>> 
>> I think you shouldn’t copy manually the .desktop file to
>> ~/.configure/autostart, precisely because of that.
>> 
>> Instead this should be done via in indirect GC root (as in “guix build
>> -r the-root owncloud-client”) or, ideally, by having it GuixSD-managed.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> Ludo’.
>
> I agree it shouldn't copy a .desktop file into .config/autostart/. In
> this case, the offending code is here¹, so there's not much that can be
> done about it. In mine I've changed the Exec line to
> /var/guix/profiles/per-user/... so it'll work as expected. In this case
> the code generates a desktop file on the fly, so modifying the .desktop
> file shipping with applications wouldn't even help here.
>
>
> ¹ 
> https://github.com/owncloud/client/blob/f326bf371d690f1929f7c5c06aebf53c7255daa6/src/common/utility_unix.cpp#L73

What do you think should be done on the Guix side?  We could patch the
code above to not install the .desktop file in ~/.config, for instance.

Thanks,
Ludo’.