Where is the menu configuration stored?

Question

Recently did a reinstall with a new profile and I've just copied back over my Wine install. Everything works but I don't have menus for any of it.

Does anybody know how to selectively copy back menu items from an old installation?

Answer 1

The applications shown in your Dash are located in /usr/share/applications. The files located there are "desktop configuration files". To add an application from wine or any other location, just copy one of the existing applications and paste it in the /usr/share/applications folder. Now you can right click and choose properties.

Make sure the application you want to add to the Dash has it's property window open for easy copy and pasting into the copied app's properties window (you're replacing the file location to reflect the application's path to be added to Dash). Change the description if you want and click on the icon in the properties window to replace it with one for the application your adding. When you're finished tap enter and close the properties window. You should now have it in the Dash.

Note:

You can open a terminal window and type sudo nautilus press and press enter to open a file manager window with root privileges so you can make the copy and changes to the properties. Be sure to close out of the window when you're finished.

Answer 2

The short answer is a combination of ~/.config/menus and ~/.local/share/applications. The first stores the menu configuration while the second stores the .desktop shortcut files that the menu displays.

1. Start with the desktop files. Wine (thankfully) creates its own subdirectory at ~/.local/share/applications/wine so you can copy that straight over. For other applications, you might have to be a bit more selective about things.

This unfortunately doesn't make the launchers trusted. The quickest way I've found to do that is by running this little hack:

find ~/.local/share/applications -name '*.desktop' | sed 's, ,\\&,g' | xargs sudo chmod ugo+rx

1. Then copy over the relevant menu configs and reload the menus. Unity probably needs unity --replace and if you're using panels as I am, killall gnome-panel does the trick.

2. Oh and you need to merge in the icons too. They're sitting in ~/.local/share/icons.