Open Bug 1637575 Opened 5 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Add a .desktop file

Categories

(Thunderbird :: OS Integration, enhancement)

enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: jonathan.brielmaier, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

I'm working on the GNU Guix (Linux) package opening a mailto: links doesnt result in opening a new message window of thunderbird. This is due to a missing .desktop file. The thunderbird sources doesn't contain a .desktop file.

So the linux distros adding a desktop file downstream in there packages, e.g.
https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/mozilla:Factory/MozillaThunderbird/thunderbird.desktop?expand=1
https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/thunderbird.desktop?h=packages/thunderbird

I think it would make sense to deliver a .desktop file with the thunderbird sources. This would also streamline the appearance of Thunderbird in desktop environment (e.g. GNOME) menus of the various distros.

A simple example could be:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Mozilla Thunderbird
GenericName=Mail client
Comment=Mail client supporting mail, news, chat and calendar
TryExec=thunderbird
Exec=thunderbird %u
Icon=thunderbird
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/mailto;

What do you think?

Looks like Firefox has something https://searchfox.org/comm-central/search?q=.desktop&path=
Are those used?

No they are not used. And they should be at least modified for Thunderbird, e.g. MimeType's etc.

This is very relevant.

Currently every distribution adds its own .desktop file in their packaging, which introduces inconsistencies and bugs that are hard to fix properly.

See for example https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1752195 and https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440062

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