[maemo-developers] Making my app. appear on the Navigator menu

[From: Gregory 'guardian' Pakosz]

> The problem I'm having now is understanding what I'm supposed to do to
> fix this. Having looked at all of the documentation I've listed above, I
> began reading the How To titled "How to write a new application to maemo
> 3.x". This appears to show a completely different folder hierarchy to
> the one that is in the Hello World example. I've tried following its
> instructions for creating a .desktop and .service file for my
> application, and I've rebuilt my .deb package with these in place. All
> I've managed to achieve so far, though, is make the right icon appear
> next to the application in the Application Manager. I still don't get
> the application's icon appearing anywhere in the Navigator, so I can't
> fire it up to see if anything else works.
>

i suggest you convert the energy you put in writing those long emails 
into reading carefully

http://maemo.org/development/documentation/tutorials/Maemo_tutorial_bora.html
http://maemo.org/development/documentation/how-tos/3-x/howto_new_application_bora.html

> My biggest problem is that all of the instructions I've read so far
> insist on giving me examples, and I can't pick out which things are
> relevant to me and which are not. The various Makefiles and so on list
> all kinds of things that are clearly irrelevant to me, and I've no idea
> how closely I have to stick to the folder hierarchy shown in the "How to
> write a new application to maemo 3.x" instructions. Also, I'm unsure
> whether I'm supposed to set up a Makefile.am script to ensure that
> "something" gets done with the .desktop and .service files. Do these get
> automatically recognised and dealt with, or do I have to tell the
> installer what to do with them? (In which case, it would be nice to read
> a proper explanation of what has to happen to them. Examples are fine if
> they are directly applicable to what you are trying to do. If they
> aren't 100% applicable, they are useless because they don't provide any
> proper context for deciding what I need to do in my particular case.)
> 

studying maemopad is a good exercise to understand what's going on 
(apt-get source maemopad), it worked for me.

if you are unsure about the directory structure and you have no real 
reason to change it, then stick with the one suggested: this really 
eases reading the docs and tutorials.

also, in the "Getting Application to Task Navigator Menu" section of the 
Maemo 3.x tutorial, it is explained that:

"To make application visible in maemo Task Navigator it needs a Desktop 
file for the application. This file contains all the essential 
information needed to show the application entry in the menu, like name, 
binary and D-BUS service name. Name of the file should be 
[application].desktop and location in filesystem 
“/usr/share/applications/hildon/”

"D-BUS service file is installed in “/usr/share/dbus-1/services/” and 
maemo GUI needs to be restarted with “af-sb-init.sh restart” before 
D-BUS daemon recognizes it."

so, yes something has to be done with .desktop and .service files. This 
is the purpose of data/Makefile.am (see maemopad source distribution)

if you are not familiar with Makefile.am files, please read about 
autotools and automake:

http://www-src.lip6.fr/homepages/Alexandre.Duret-Lutz/autotools.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html

> Any offers of help? Or is this going to be another of my questions that
> disappears into a black hole never to get answered?

remember that help on the irc channel or the dev mailing list is 
provided by volunteers. "disappear into a black hole" ? from what i can 
recall, a lot of people on the mailing list helped you already. did you 
ever consider you were not asking the right way ? 
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

in any case, whining never helped.

> I should add that I'm writing this application on behalf of a customer,
> and from the outset neither of us were sure that the N800 was a good
> platform to target. After all the difficulties I've had in finding
> accurate and complete information, and the lack of response I've been
> getting to the questions I've been posing on this mailing list, I'm
> inclined to suggest to them that we were right, and that we should stick
> to more mature technology in future.

how does it help solving your problem with .desktop and .service files ?

unfortunately, blaming the platform, the people behind it, and the 
community won't bring you more attention nor more help offers.

> The N800 is an interesting piece of
> kit, but without MUCH better documentation and properly integrated
> development tools, it is too expensive to write for and more trouble
> than it's worth.
> 

welcome to the embedded world, no you're no more under windows sitting 
comfortably behind visual studio's brilliant debugger :)

good luck