Ignoring /usr/share/applications

Question

Hey all
I'm looking for a way to ignore the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications
I've created my own .desktop files and stored them in /usr/local/share/applications. The inconsistencies and sheer amount of .desktop files that applications bring with them by default were cluttering my menus. However, it's strating to become a pain to keep /usr/share/applications empty, since everytime a package gets a small update it puts its .desktop files back there.
Is there a way to ignore the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications? Perhaps through some sort of environment variable? Thanks

Answer 1

robrene wrote:
It's not just the menus that I want this for, the .desktop files also reflect what applications can open certain mimetypes and they determine what appears in "Open with..." dialogs for example.
Perhaps making sure all .desktop files have an entry that reads "Hidden=true" would indeed be a good solution to my problem though, since pacman will still be able to track the files and I could have a script that asserts this everytime I run it. However my scripting skills for these kind of text manipulation tasks are subpar... Could someone please help me write a script that:
For each *.desktop file in /usr/share/applications:
    Searches for the "Hidden" key
    If found, makes sure it's set to "true"
    If not, append the Hidden=true entry
I'd really appreciate the help
Only lightly tested, seems to work.
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob
for f in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop; do
awk 'BEGIN {hidden=1} /^Hidden=/ {print "Hidden=true"; hidden=0; next} {print} END {if(hidden) print "Hidden=true"}' "$f" > "/tmp/${f##*/}.new"
mv "/tmp/${f##*/}.new" "$f"
done
Last edited by Profjim (2010-01-31 19:27:46)