Guix and desktop files

Guix and desktop files

[hiphish]

Hello everyone,

I am using Kubuntu 18.04 and I recently installed Guix as a secondary package
manager. I'm still feeling my way around and I have been wondering whether
the desktop files provided by some applications can be integrated with the
desktop environment.

When I install an application through apt a desktop file is placed in

    /usr/share/applications

and the application shows up in my Application menu. Guix has an analogue to
this under

	~/.guix-profile/share/applications/

and it contains Gimp at the moment, but I have no idea how to hook this
directory up to the menu. Is there an environment variable like there is for
$PATH? I know I can copy or symlink Guix's desktop file into 

	~/.local/share/applications/

but this is manual work and the symlinks can become stale.

Re: Guix and desktop files

[Alex Kost]

hiphish@openmailbox.org (2018-08-11 19:46 +0000) wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I am using Kubuntu 18.04 and I recently installed Guix as a secondary package
> manager. I'm still feeling my way around and I have been wondering whether
> the desktop files provided by some applications can be integrated with the
> desktop environment.
>
> When I install an application through apt a desktop file is placed in
>
>     /usr/share/applications
>
> and the application shows up in my Application menu. Guix has an analogue to
> this under
>
> 	~/.guix-profile/share/applications/
>
> and it contains Gimp at the moment, but I have no idea how to hook this
> directory up to the menu. Is there an environment variable like there is for
> $PATH?

Probably XDG_DATA_DIRS, although it should be set appropriately if you
source your ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile

-- 
Alex

Re: Guix and desktop files

[hiphish]

The file ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile only contains

    export PATH="${GUIX_PROFILE:-/gnu/store/0mbr4gk9q24gyvn64mnlpjicwm2h70nc-profile}/bin${PATH:+:}$PATH"

It only exports the $PATH. Am I meant to make manual adjustments to this file
or is it managed by Guix as well? And while I'm at it, what is the way of
sourcing the bash completions installed by Guix?

    for f in $(ls /home/aleksandar/.guix-profile/etc/bash_completion.d/); do
        source $f	
    done

And how do I get bash completion for Guix itself? It is not contained in the
above directory.

> hiphish@openmailbox.org (2018-08-11 19:46 +0000) wrote:
> 
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I am using Kubuntu 18.04 and I recently installed Guix as a secondary package
>> manager. I'm still feeling my way around and I have been wondering whether
>> the desktop files provided by some applications can be integrated with the
>> desktop environment.
>>
>> When I install an application through apt a desktop file is placed in
>>
>>     /usr/share/applications
>>
>> and the application shows up in my Application menu. Guix has an analogue to
>> this under
>>
>> 	~/.guix-profile/share/applications/
>>
>> and it contains Gimp at the moment, but I have no idea how to hook this
>> directory up to the menu. Is there an environment variable like there is for
>> $PATH?
> 
> Probably XDG_DATA_DIRS, although it should be set appropriately if you
> source your ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile
> 
> -- 
> Alex

Re: Guix and desktop files

[hiphish]

OK, I suspected that I'm not meant to edit ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile myself,
that's why I asked. It's weird that $XDG_DATA_DIRS was not added after I
installed Gimp; maybe because Gimp uses GTK+ 2 instead of GTK+ 3? Who knows, I
have added ~/.guix-profile/share/applications/ to the environment variable
manually for the time being.

> hiphish@openmailbox.org (2018-08-12 23:12 +0000) wrote:
> 
>> ...
> 
> You probably have very few packages installed in your guix profile, so
> there is only PATH there.  In general, the more packages you install,
> the more (required) environment variables will appear in that file.
> 
> If I understand correctly, XDG_DATA_DIRS appears in "etc/profile" if
> 'glib' (or 'qtbase') package is installed.  But usually there is no need
> to installed 'glib' explicitly: it is propagated (installed
> automatically) by many GTK-based (or Qt-based) packages.  In my case, I
> have 'zathura' package installed, which propagates 'cairo', which
> propagates 'glib'.
> 
>> ... 
> It is managed by Guix, and you are not supposed to modify any file from
> the /gnu/store.

Re: Guix and desktop files

[hiphish]

Nope, my ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile only exports the $PATH. Could it be
because I installed Guix on top of Kubuntu instead of using GuixSD? The same
with .bashrc, I already had one and Guix did not alter the existing one.

I have no problems with making adjustments to my ~/.bashrc, I was just
wondering if I was doing something wrong here.

> Strange, I have a dozen variables that are exported in this file, including
> XDG_DATA_DIRS.
> 
>> Am I meant to make manual adjustments to this file or is it managed by Guix as
>> well?
> 
> No, profiles belong to the store, they are read-only and they are managed by
> Guix.
> 
> If you want your own adjustments, place them in ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.profile
> if you don't have ~/.bash_profile).
> 
> For completion and the other issues, check this:  by default Guix
> provides a ~/.bashrc which sources /etc/profile.  This is a crucial step.
> If you've removed this sourcing from your .bashrc (or you don't use bash), make
> sure to source /etc/profile).
> 
> Bash completion is set from /etc/bashrc, which is sourced by /etc/profile.
> 
> Hope that helps!
> 
> -- 
> Pierre Neidhardt
> https://ambrevar.xyz/