Re: [gentoo-dev] Menu System

[Jon Nelson <jnelson@jamponi.net>]

On 17 Apr 2002 22:41:27 -0500
Tod M Neidt <tod@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 2002-04-17 at 17:29, Mario Andres Yepes C wrote:
> > 
> > I think thats the basic idea... The thing would be that portage should
> > provide a couple of functions to easy the process of adding an entry
> > to the menu.
> > 
> > Somethink like
> > 
> > add_menu(){
> >     mkdir -p ${MENUDIR}
> >     cat >> ${MENUDIR}/${PN} << EOF
> > ?package(${P}):  section="$2" icon="$3" title="$4" longtitle="$5"
> > needs="$1" command="oo$1" $mimetypes_item 
> > EOF
> > }
> > 
> > So in an ebuild you could have...
> > 
> > add_menu Applications/Games amor.png "A waste of cpu" "Amor, a game"
> > x11
> > 
> > Of course this is just a quick idea, I think that the function could
> > be better implemented so the way to call it is more straight forward.
> > 
> 
> Hi!
> 
> My thought on this issue would be the addition of a 'domenu' helper
> script that could be a one line addition in the src_install function.
> 
> The 'domenu' script would cascade through the desktop USE variables
> (i.e. gnome, kde, etc , might have to add some for other desktops that
> don't already have a USE variable.)  If the USE variable for a
> particlular desktop is set then insert a menu item.  for example (off
> the top of my head, so illustrative, not ncessarily working),

The problem with that approach is that if you later decide to use gnome,
you would have to re-emerge everything to get its menu entry.
Having each program place its menu entry (or entries) in a central
location (ala Debian, again), and then having a post-process program
zip through and create the KDE, GNOME, AfterStep, BlackBox, and
so on "system" menus sounds better to me.

Porting the "menu" package from Debian shouldn't be hard at all.

-- 
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.

Jon Nelson <jnelson@jamponi.net>
C and Python Code Gardener