How can I make the Rox filer show up in Gnome Do or the Unity Dash?

Question

I have installed Rox filer on my Ubuntu 11.10 system, but when I open the dash and type rox-filer, it does not show up. Also, when I open Gnome Do, it does not show up until I type the whole name (Gnome Do normally shows partial matches) and does not show an icon.

Answer 1

Oh, wow. The rox-filer package doesn't ship a .desktop file, but it does ship a Debian menu file. Old school! That should be filed as a (wishlist) bug against the package.

Desktop shells (like Unity) and applications (like Do) use the .desktop files to identify applications, their icons, and how to launch them. Since rox-filer doesn't include a .desktop file, it's not listed as an application.

You can create a .desktop file for rox-filer and it'll appear in Unity and Do (after a restart of Do). You could create a file ~/.local/share/applications/rox-filer.desktop and copy the following text into it:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Rox Filer
Comment=A filer of some sort
Icon=user-home
Exec=rox-filer
Categories=Utility;