Shell script: Getting the user's home directory?

[master5o1]

sudo whoami returns root.

[scragar]

most users install programs from either their home Dir's or the desktop, you could check for either of those as the current dir, and go from there.

[master5o1]

jason@meinDell:~$ happy=$(ls /home)
jason@meinDell:~$ echo $happy
jason lost+found

So, if you can split $happy into separate vars and kick out lost+found from our list then it is possible to get the home dirs of each user...

[ecs_pf5]

Isn't it always going to end up being root though, because it's always root that's running the script inside the .deb no matter who starts it off? (might be wrong)

happy with just a link in the main KDE or Gnome menu tbh, it seems more sensible like that, if I can figure it out.

I'm wondering whether this is the right place to be:

http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-....html/ch1.html

[Vadi]

Yeah, someone help him get it into the menu, that's a much better place.

This should be moved to programming talk though

[master5o1]

ecs_pf5, That's why I realise that you cannot use $HOME like variables.

~ = $HOME = /home/`whoami` = ...

But where they invoke it can be used, I suppose.

[ecs_pf5]

I'm wondering about dh_installmenu now having taken amor to bits.

Picked on amor for no other reason than it looked like a smallish .deb that did create a menu item, and I figured if I opened it up it might show some hints on how it inserts it's listing into the main menu.

This is from it's /control/postinst script (the one that runs immediately after file payload unpacking, during package install):

#!/bin/sh
set -e
# Automatically added by dh_installmenu
if [ "$1" = "configure" ] && [ -x "`which update-menus 2>/dev/null`" ]; then
    update-menus
fi

Inside it's unpacked folder tree payload, there is:

/data/usr/share/menu/amor

which seems to be a text file configuring menu items:

?package(amor):\
    needs="x11"\
    section="Games/Toys"\
    hints="KDE"\
    title="AMOR"\
    longtitle="AMOR (Amusing Misuse of Resources)"\
    icon="/usr/share/pixmaps/amor.xpm"\
    command="/usr/bin/amor"

Then there's a couple of directories of images:

/data/usr/share/pixmaps/amor.xpm --------> that looks like the menu icon

/data/usr/share/icons/hicolor/ --------> few more icons grouped by size in 4 subfolders, not sure they're menu related though

Looking at:

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/debhelper

As far as I can gather so far, one needs a file called 'rules' located in the /package_build_directory (not inside the /package_build_directory/DEBIAN directory, but beside it, directly inside package_build_directory - which seems to be referred to throughout the debian documentation as lower case /debian/ )

i.e. a package build structure something like

/BuildDirectory/DEBIAN/control
/BuildDirectory/DEBIAN/postinst
/BuildDirectory/DEBIAN/prerm
/BuildDirectory/usr/bin/my-executable-file
/BuildDirectory/rules ----------------------------------------> ???

.. and then, one calls debhelper programs directly within the rules file. so you call dh_installmenu in there, and somehow it configures the package to include menu items. Hopefully in some kind of system independent manner.

As yet, haven't got to grips with the detail.. not sure which files and resources you have to manually supply and which are automatically generated, and not too sure of the syntax for the dh_installmenu entry in the rules file.. The documentation is not sparse but it is, quite confusing to a newcomer from Windows-land.

There's no evidence of a rules file in amor's .deb, I guess it gets ditched by dpkg once it's done it's job. Once the debhelper package is installed though, it does contain some (confusing looking) example rules files in /usr/share/doc/debhelper/examples/

I don't know about update-menus, it doesn't seem to be on my system even after installing debhelper and dpkg-dev (maybe it isn't needed on Kubuntu/Ubuntu?) - edit - wasn't on my system, apt-get install menu fixed that

Now having *limited* success. Did manage to coax my .deb into placing a link on the K menu, however it's very shaky, the main category seemed to be taken from the old install of amor (now removed) whilst the actual link item itself did list & point to my own app. So this is on the right lines but I've got the structure & syntax messed up.

I had to shove dh_installmenu way up high in the rules file before it worked, up above all the other stuff (I am just using the simplest example file out of the debhelper examples directory)

-?-

[ecs_pf5]

Well I got it working.. after a fashion

I read and read and read and played the old insomniac trick..

The way to do it seemed to be, to build the debian package using a menu file in {build directory}/usr/share/menu/ a la:

?package(packagename):\
    needs="x11"\
    section="Development"\ <-- say, if you want it in the 'Development' main menu
    title="Packagename"\
    longtitle="Packagename (experiment)"\
    icon="/usr/share/pixmaps/packagename.xpm"\
    command="/usr/bin/packagename-executable"

, then call 'update-menus' in the postinst and postrm scripts

however despite reading all the documentation I could find, and rebuilding the package numerous times, it never worked. I really did try and try but the debian package-building documentation just doesn't seem to work (clearly I'm doing something wrong somewhere, 4 or 5 tutorials can't all be wrong!)

Seems to be a couple of different package-building approaches that somewhat conflict in their details, varying in complexity level.. I got the packages to build okay but never, insert a menu item.

-------

Then in the end I found that if you make a 'Desktop Config File' with the right details in it using vi / kate / whatever:

[Desktop Entry]
Categories=GTK;Development;    <--- this seems to specify the menu link location
Comment=Get menus working
Comment[en_GB]=Get menus working
Exec[$e]=packagename
GenericName=An experiment
GenericName[en_GB]=An experiment
Icon=packagename
MimeType=
Name=Packagename
Name[en_GB]=Packagename
Path[$e]=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
Version=1.0
X-DCOP-ServiceType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

.. and put it in the build folder as {build folder}/usr/share/applications/kde/packagename.desktop

.. and supply a set of icons in {build folder}/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/

(and the corresponding 22x22, 32x32, 48x48 dirs)

.. and then build the package using

sudo dpkg -b {build folder} {packagename.deb}

hey presto - a package that installs, places a link in the proper place in the main menu, and then uninstalls completely via adept.

-----------

Wish I could find the trick to getting the /usr/share/menu/<packagename> menu-file method working though, because that seems to be the proper way to do it, and I guess would stand more chance of working properly across different systems?






Sorry that this has gone on a tangent regards coding, is it possible a mod can move the thread to the programming section?