How are programs executed in Ubuntu?

[Colin Law]

On 3 February 2016 at 14:32, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> hi,
> Am Mittwoch, den 03.02.2016, 13:45 +0000 schrieb Colin Law:
>> On 3 February 2016 at 12:28, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> > hi,
>> > Am Mittwoch, den 03.02.2016, 11:56 +1100 schrieb blind Pete:
>> >> C
>> >> I am very surprised.  The FHS (filesystem hierarchy standard) indicates
>> >> that /usr/local/ is the place to store host specific stuff.  It has
>> >> always been in my PATH.  Type "echo $PATH" without the quotes in a
>> >> terminal.  And /usr/local/share exists on my machine, although
>> >> /usr/local/share/applications/ does not.
>> >
>> > that sounds like a bug ... checking XDG_DATA_DIRS on my trusty system i
>> > see:
>> > ogra at anubis:~/datengrab/snappy$ env|grep XDG_DATA_DIRS
>> > XDG_DATA_DIRS=/usr/share/ubuntu:/usr/share/gnome:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/
>> >
>> > so /usr/local/share is definitely in the searchpaths and apps using the
>> > xdg standard should actually respect /usr/local/share/applications/ if
>> > you created it and added a .desktop file ...
>> >
>> > see http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/menu-spec-latest.html
>>
>> Hi Oliver, I am not sure what it is that are saying is a bug.  Do you
>> mean that if I place a .desktop file in /usr/local/share/applications
>> then it should automatically be seen by the Dash?
>>
> correct ... the linked spec says $XDG_DATA_DIRS/applications is
> valid ... given that /usr/local/share is in XDG_DATA_DIRS by
> default /usr/local/share/applications should be valid too ...
> if you create that dir and drop a .desktop file into it ... and unity
> (or any other desktop that claims being freedesktop spec compatible)
> doesn't pick it up, thats a bug ...

OK, thanks, I had better give it another try then.

Colin