Bug#607838: desktop-base: two .desktop files refer to a non-existing icon
(The bugs #607838 and #628116 in desktop-base are duplicates.)
According to both bug-reports two files are linking to a non-existing image file. Why isn't this already fixed? Why did nobody care?
The answer seems to be simple: The files are not needed.
Out of curiosity I did a bit of a research about this matter. It seems, nautilus was once patched to show the swirl (/usr/share/pixmaps/debian-logo.png) and the swirl with the lock (debian-security.png) to make the whole desktop look more "debian-like". At least this is mentioned in a mail from 2004 [1]. In 2004, commanding
dpkg -L nautilus-data | grep -i debian
lead to this result:
/usr/share/doc/nautilus-data/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/nautilus/initial-desktop/debian-homepage.desktop
/usr/share/nautilus/initial-desktop/debian-reference.desktop
/usr/share/nautilus/initial-desktop/debian-security.desktop
When I do this now in Debian Wheezy, the result is just:
/usr/share/doc/nautilus-data/changelog.Debian.gz
So the debian*.desktop files are no longer used by nautilus-data. This is confirmed by Michael Biebl in an entry to that changelog.Debian.gz from 2011:
nautilus (3.2.1-2) unstable; urgency=low
(...)
- Drop Recommends on desktop-base. It was originally added when nautilus was patched to show the .desktop icons from the desktop-base package. We don't do that anymore, so the Recommends has become obsolete. [2]
So the following files in desktop-base seem to be obsolete:
debian-homepage.desktop
debian-reference.desktop
debian-security.desktop
pixmaps/debian-security.png
source/debian-security.xcf
and also the references to these files in
/debian/README.Debian (section 1.2 and 2.)
Perhaps we could resolve the bugs by removing these files from the next version of desktop-base?
Happy new year!
Ulrich
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2004/03/msg00212.html
[2] /usr/share/doc/nautilus-data/changelog.Debian.gz
BTW: /usr/share/pixmaps/debian-logo.png comes from the debhelper package and not from desktop-base.
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