Desktop Integration

onelf can ship a .desktop entry and icon inside the package and expose them so users can pin the app to their menu or dock.

Bundling a desktop entry

Put the standard files under share/ in your AppDir:

myapp/
├── bin/
│   └── myapp
├── lib/
│   └── ...
└── share/
    ├── applications/
    │   └── myapp.desktop
    └── icons/
        └── hicolor/
            ├── 128x128/apps/myapp.png
            ├── 256x256/apps/myapp.png
            └── scalable/apps/myapp.svg

The runtime automatically prepends $ONELF_DIR/share to $XDG_DATA_DIRS, so any GTK/GLib code in the packed app finds the bundled schemas, icons, and mime types. The user's system tools can also read them via the extraction commands below.

Extract the desktop entry

onelf desktop myapp.onelf                       # print to stdout
onelf desktop myapp.onelf -o myapp.desktop      # write to file

The runtime-side equivalent:

./myapp.onelf --onelf-desktop > myapp.desktop

Extract the icon

onelf icon myapp.onelf                          # PNG to stdout
onelf icon myapp.onelf -o myapp.png             # to file

Runtime-side:

./myapp.onelf --onelf-icon > myapp.png

onelf finds the largest share/icons/.../apps/<name>.png it can.

Installing system-wide

A minimal install script:

#!/bin/sh
set -eu
APP=./myapp.onelf
DEST="$HOME/.local"

mkdir -p "$DEST/bin" "$DEST/share/applications" "$DEST/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps"
cp "$APP" "$DEST/bin/"
"$APP" --onelf-desktop > "$DEST/share/applications/myapp.desktop"
"$APP" --onelf-icon > "$DEST/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/myapp.png"
update-desktop-database "$DEST/share/applications" 2>/dev/null || true

Now the user can launch the app from their menu.

Exec= line

The .desktop file should use the packed binary itself:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=MyApp
Exec=myapp.onelf %f
Icon=myapp
Type=Application
Categories=Utility;

If you have multiple entrypoints, use their argv[0] names:

Exec=myapp.onelf-daemon

combined with the matching symlink myapp.onelf-daemon -> myapp.onelf.

Auto-updating menu entries on new installs

Call the install script from --onelf-update via a wrapper, or have a post-install hook that sets up the menu entries. onelf doesn't automate desktop integration on the user's system because that's a distro-specific concern.