add .desktop prompt launcher

[tulth]

Description

Add a prompt bar that can launch .desktop files.

Example use

import XMonad.Prompt.DotDesktop ( appLaunchPrompt )

myDotDeskTopLaunch = appLaunchPrompt (
  myXPConfig { complCaseSensitivity = CaseInSensitive
             , searchPredicate = fuzzyMatch
             , sorter = fuzzySort
             , maxComplRows = Just 2
             })

myKeymap :: [(String, X ())]
myKeymap =
  [ ("M-M1-d", myDotDeskTopLaunch),
...

Checklist

• [X] I've read CONTRIBUTING.md

• [ ] I've considered how to best test these changes (property, unit, manually, ...) and concluded: XXX

• [ ] I updated the CHANGES.md file

[tulth]

I am interested in reactions to this idea and if there is a better way to go about it.

I am very happy with this in my setup. It is particularly useful for launching steam games.

[tulth]

Mh, doesn't work on my end; a .desktop file that's only in ~/.local/share/applications but not in any of the other directories will fail to be found

Arg! How strange. I introduced some broken desktop files and logging locally to double check the behavior on my end and I cannot seem to reproduce the issue yet.

logging diffs:

modified   XMonad/Prompt/DotDesktop.hs
@@ -54,6 +54,8 @@ getDirContents dir = do
 getDotDesktopApps :: IO [DotDesktopApp]
 getDotDesktopApps = do
   appFolders <- getAppFolders
+  appendFile "/home/tulth/.xmonad/debug.log" $
+    unlines $ ("appfolder: " ++ ) <$> appFolders
   contentsPerFolder <- mapM getDirContents appFolders
   let folderFiles = join $ rights contentsPerFolder
       dotDesktopFiles = filter isDotDesktop folderFiles
@@ -63,6 +65,7 @@ getDotDesktopApps = do
   let parseErrs = lefts parseResults
       dotDesktopApps = rights parseResults
   mapM_ print parseErrs
+  appendFile "/home/tulth/.xmonad/debug.log" $ unlines parseErrs
   return dotDesktopApps

I thought perhaps a parse failure in a folder would cause a bigger problem, but that was no issue on my system. It give the expected result on my system and user and system desktops are listed, and the broken files i created show up. debug.log:

appfolder: /home/tulth/.local/share/applications
appfolder: /usr/share/applications
Parse Resulted in no KeyVals in file /home/tulth/.local/share/applications/broken_user.desktop
Parse Resulted in no KeyVals in file /usr/share/applications/broken_system.desktop

Any ideas? Is XDG_DATA_DIRS is set or no? On my system XDG_DATA_DIRS is not set and it picks up defaults.

[slotThe]

Any ideas?

Sorry, I was referring to gtk-launch in that comment, not your implementation

[slotThe]

@tulth what do you think about the idea of using gtk-launch instead? Semms like a standard tool that people will definitely have installed and would simplify this quite a bit

[tulth]

@tulth what do you think about the idea of using gtk-launch instead? Semms like a standard tool that people will definitely have installed and would simplify this quite a bit

I was thinking about this as well, but I do not think it makes much difference. The .desktop files still have to be parsed to find the names and the filter out only applications. The only thing it saves is filtering out the %X patterns.

[slotThe]

I was thinking about this as well, but I do not think it makes much difference. The .desktop files still have to be parsed to find the names and the filter out only applications. The only thing it saves is filtering out the %X patterns.

I don't use desktop files, so forgive my ignorance here, but the man page for gtk-launch says that it "launches an application using the given name". Does that mean there are .desktop files for things that aren't executable programs? What would those be? Wouldn't gtk-launch also ignore them or does it do other things as well?

[geekosaur]

I note that gtk-launch also knows how to activate an already running application instead of just starting a new one. (Of course, starting a new one should also do that.) This does, however, imply that some .desktop files may contain DBus activations instead of executables.

[slotThe]

@tulth any updates?

[slotThe]

@tulth friendly ping