xdg-launch

Package xdg-launch-1.12 was released under GPLv3 license 2022-01-28.

This is a "C"-language program that can be used to launch XDG desktop applications with full startup notification and window manager assistance from the command line. The command is able to launch desktop applications, autostart entries and xsession entries. It is useful when generating applications root menus for light-weight window managers that do not provide startup notification for applications launched using the keyboard or root menu.

The source for xdg-launch is hosted on GitHub.

Release

This is the xdg-launch-1.12 package, released 2022-01-28. This release, and the latest version, can be obtained from GitHub, using a command such as:

$> git clone https://github.com/bbidulock/xdg-launch.git

Please see the RELEASE and NEWS files for release notes and history of user visible changes for the current version, and the ChangeLog file for a more detailed history of implementation changes. The TODO file lists features not yet implemented and other outstanding items.

Please see the INSTALL file for installation instructions.

When working from git(1), please use this file. An abbreviated installation procedure that works for most applications appears below.

This release is published under GPLv3. Please see the license in the file COPYING.

Quick Start

The quickest and easiest way to get xdg-launch up and running is to run the following commands:

$> git clone https://github.com/bbidulock/xdg-launch.git
$> cd xdg-launch
$> ./autogen.sh
$> ./configure
$> make
$> make DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install

This will configure, compile and install xdg-launch the quickest. For those who like to spend the extra 15 seconds reading ./configure --help, some compile time options can be turned on and off before the build.

For general information on GNU's ./configure, see the file INSTALL.

Dependencies

To build and install this package, the libxrandr, libxinerama and glib2 packages should be installed first. To run the dmenu_launch script in the package requires the dmenu package to be installed.

Running

Read the manual page after installation:

$> man xdg-launch

Features

The following programs are included in xdg-launch:

• xdg-launch(1) -- This is the primary program.

• dmenu_launch(1) -- This is a little script that uses xdg-launch(1) and dmenu(1) to provide an application menu.

• xdg-autostart(1) -- This is a little script that invokes xdg-launch(1) as a launcher for auto-start programs instead of applications.

• xdg-xsession(1) -- This is a little script that invokes xdg-launch(1) as a launcher for X Sessions programs (window managers) instead of applications.

• xdg-session(1) -- This is a little script that invokes xdg-launch(1) as a launcher for X Sessions programs (window managers) instead of applications a simple session and full auto-start procedure.

• xdg-entry(1) -- This is a little script that invokes xdg-launch(1)` with the --info option and lists which information would be used for startup notification and launching of the resulting application.

• xdg-toolwait(1) -- This is a little script that invokes xdg-launch(1) with the --toolwait option.

• xdg-which(1), xdg-whereis(1) -- Two little programs what parallel which(1) and whereis(1) for desktop entry files instead of binaries.

• xdg-assist(1) -- A program to monitor startup notification and provide notification as programs start up and performs startup notification completion of applications that do not complete. It also assists window managers with supporting startup notification and other EWMH/NetWM features.

• xdg-list(1) -- lists desktop entry files.

• xdg-types(1) -- shows the content types provided by a desktop application.

Also provided (when glib2 is available) are some little tools for the XDG desktop:

• xdg-find(1) -- finds desktop entry files based on a number of search criteria.

• xdg-prefs(1) -- locates or sets preferred applications by category or mime type.

Issues

Report issues on GitHub here.