Re: a new window manager
* Michael Renner <michael.renner@gmx.de> [080725 11:41]:
> At the moment I'm building a deb package for a window manager. Everything is
> fine, but there is no entry in KDMs 'session type' menu.
>
> I found the 'update-alternatives' command and call
>
> update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-session-manager \
> x-session-manager /usr/bin/5Dwm 50
>
> in the postinst.
> I found such an entry in the ksmserver- as well as in the icewm package. While
> it work for these wm's, something is wrong with my entry.
There are three things for that.
The first is the x-session-manager x-window-manager alternatives.
(If it is a windw manager, it should be x-window-manager, not
x-session-manager).
The second is the Debian menu. For this you need a debian/menu file
and dh_installmenu. This allows all full window managers to switch
to this directly and everything showing a list of window managers
should show it.
The third thing is that kdm and gdm are/were/whatever broken to not
support the Debian menu system. (At least when menu-xdg is installed
having the menu file should make it show up, otherwise it is a bug
in the display manager). To work around this some people add .desktop
files for window managers that have nothing to do with those things.
As this might cause duplicate entries on well-configured systems
or further work for you (to find out how to tell it that there are two
entries there and only showing one), I strongly recommend against adding
that file.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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