[vim/vim] make install does not install .desktop files by default on Ubuntu (Issue #15528)

[John Devin]

Steps to reproduce

1. make and make install vim on Ubuntu 24.04
2. See that the vim.desktop and gvim.desktop files are not installed in /usr/share/applications/, or elsewhere

Expected behaviour

I'm not sure that this is a bug, or just unsupported; however, installing after doing ./configure --prefix="$HOME/.local/" does install .desktop files in $HOME/.local/share/applications with no other configuration, so I believe installing them is expected.

This has actually been in the todo.txt file for a while: (link):

Installation of .desktop files does not work everywhere.
It's now fixed, but the target directory probably isn't right.
Add configure check?
Should use /usr/local/share/applications or /usr/share/applications.
Or use $XDG_DATA_DIRS.
Also need to run update-desktop-database (Kuriyama Kazunobu, 2015 Nov 4)

It seems make install only checks for /usr/local/share/applications and not /usr/share/applications. Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't have /usr/local/share/applications, so the .desktop files aren't installed (I did upgrade from 20.04 though, so if a fresh install is different I'll close this).

Version of Vim

9.1.0682

Environment

OS: Ubuntu 24.04

Logs and stack traces

No response

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[Christian Brabandt]

So the question is, if you create a directory /usr/local/share/applications/ and copy the gvim.desktop files into it, does your desktop environment pick it up from there or not? If applications do not bother to look into /usr/local/share/applications for those desktop files, then it does not make sense to install those desktop files there, no?

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[Christian Brabandt]

Ah, I see the issue. $DESTDIR is usually not defined and as such the directory is not created. Can you try the following patch please?

diff --git a/src/Makefile b/src/Makefile
index 2da0c6f4a..a23d9822c 100644
--- a/src/Makefile
+++ b/src/Makefile
@@ -2624,7 +2624,7 @@ ICONTHEMEPATH = $(DATADIR)/icons/hicolor
 DESKTOPPATH = $(DESTDIR)$(DATADIR)/applications
 KDEPATH = $(HOME)/.kde/share/icons
 install-icons:
-       if test -n "$(DESTDIR)"; then \
+       if test -n "$(DESTDIR)$(DATADIR)"; then \
                $(MKDIR_P) $(ICON48PATH) $(ICON32PATH) \
                $(ICON16PATH) $(DESKTOPPATH); \
        fi

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[John M Devin]

Just tried it; it works.

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[Christian Brabandt]

thanks, created #15546 to fix this

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[Christian Brabandt]

Closed #15528 as completed via dabf07e.

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