install_freedesktop

Setuptools extension to install launcher icons for KDE, GNOME, or other freedesktop.org compatible Linux/UNIX environments.

Desktop entry spec: http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/index.html

License

Copyright 2015 Jacob Welsh

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Usage

Once this module is installed (such as by using the setup_requires argument), desktop entry files will be automatically installed for each gui_scripts entry point. Example:

setup(
    ...
    setup_requires=['install_freedesktop'],
    entry_points={
        'gui_scripts': [
            'myapp=myapp:main',
        ],
    },
)

This would create myapp.desktop, setting the Name and Icon keys to “myapp” and Exec to the full path of the script.

To customize, or add desktop files for non-entry-point based scripts, pass a dict to the desktop_entries argument, where each key matches a script name and its value is a dict containing the desktop entry keys/values. Example:

setup(
    ...
    setup_requires=['install_freedesktop'],
    scripts=['myscript'],
    desktop_entries={
        'myscript': {
            'Name': 'MyApp',
            'GenericName': 'Data Processor',
            'Categories': 'Office;Database;',
        },
    },
)

Notes

Either system-wide or --user mode installation is supported, as well as --root= (for package builders). But the setuptools default egg-based installation does not work. (It doesn't run install_ subcommands; even if it did, the data files would go in the egg, not the real data directory.) So you must either use pip (recommended) or provide the --single-version-externally-managed option yourself, on the command line or in setup.cfg. Wheels and any other relocatable bdist formats will also not work, due to the need to use the final script path for the Exec in the desktop file.

Using the setup_requires argument is potentially dangerous: if the package is not found, EasyInstall will be invoked to fetch it from PyPI, even if the user thinks they have disabled this or chosen a different index. See https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/reference/pip_install.html#controlling-setup-requires.

There is no automatic handling of icon files presently, though that's in scope for this project. Quick example for doing it manually:

setup(
    ...
    data_files=[
        ('share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps', ['icons/16x16/myapp.png']),
        ('share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps', ['icons/48x48/myapp.png']),
        ('share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps', ['icons/scalable/myapp.svg']),
    ],
)