Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Menu - Bash vs. Python Rule files

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Wed, 2003-08-13 at 18:00, Heinrich Wendel wrote:
> You are right, it takes a lot of work. But the problem is that we want to have
> flexible menus, via the menu-spec. 	How should this transparent parser know
> in which category it should put the entry? The gnome/kde categories are not
> compatible with the categories listened in the menu-spec. And how can you
> know that the entries in /usr/share/applnk are generated by our parser or by
> an ebuild?

First off, using a spec that is not in use but will be in use is rather
pointless, as you are doing WAY more work than need be done.  The better
way to go about it would be to create optional support for the new
specifications and build to the current implementations.  I, quite
personally, couldn't care if this is the way things are "going to be" in
KDE/Gnome/*box/etc.  I only care how they are now.  Create some
conditionals which check for versions and match themselves to that
specification.  The menu structure should fairly well match what is
being put out by the upstream maintainers as well as possible.  As for
the "generated by parser or ebuild" that is simple enough.  The parser
should *never* create files in the "legacy" locations, but only in the
location where we designate the Gentoo menu system would go.  Any files
in the legacy locations would be placed by the package/ebuild and should
not be considered authorative for our menu system, but rather should be
parsed to *create* our menu system.  For example, if I create an ebuild
that copies a .desktop file to /usr/share/gnome/apps/Internet and call a
make_gentoo_menu function at the end of my ebuild, then it should parse
the file and add it appropriately to the Gentoo menu location.  In this
same token, I should be able to manually create a file in
/usr/share/applications or /usr/share/gnome/apps/Office or
/usr/share/applnk and then run a script, say update-menu, and it should
parse all of the legacy locations and add any new files to the Gentoo
menu system.  Essentially, we should create a new menu system that is
independent of the others, rather than trying to fix the others.  It
would be fairly trivial to patch the window managers to get their
information from the Gentoo-created menus as opposed to the intensive
problem of "fixing" every application that even thinks of installing a
menu item.  This is of course my opinion, but I am trying to keep this
all on -dev so we can get some good feedback from the users, as they're
the ones really requesting it.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux