Finally Discovering update-menus.

September 03, 2003, 02:41 pm

I've been a huge fan of GNU/Linux for quite a while, but I never knew how to make modifications to the automatically generated menus. I didn't want to blow away all the existing menu entries, as well as entries that would be added by packages installed in the future.

Finally, I have discovered update-menus and friends!

Debian makes adding and maintaining menu items incredibly easy! Users can override or provide custom menu entries as menu files in their home directories (via ~/.menu/). The file format is intuitive:

?package(rdesktop):
needs="x11"
section="Remote"
title="esi2"
command="/usr/bin/X11/rdesktop -g 1024x768 10.0.0.5"

?package(rdesktop):
needs="x11"
section="Remote"
title="pimpatron"
command="/usr/bin/X11/rdesktop -g 1024x768 10.0.0.6"

So simple and effective!