Menu Problem with Icewm? [Solved]

[BHReach]

Using Sabayon Linux 9 Spin-Base

According to this command:

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equo query installed icewm --verbose

icewm was compiled with the gnome USE flag.

From the ebuild:

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pkg_postinst() {
   if use gnome; then
      elog "You have enabled gnome USE flag which provides icewm-menu-gnome2 ."
      elog "It is used internally and generates IceWM program menus from"
      elog "FreeDesktop .desktop files"
   fi
}

However, I get an empty menu in icewm. I do not have Gnome installed but the .desktop files are in the standard directory:

/usr/share/applications

You should be able to specify the directory to look in by putting the following line in the .icewm/menu file but it has no effect.

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menuprog "Progs" folder icewm-menu-gnome2 --list /usr/share/applications/

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equo query files icewm

Does not show

icewm-menu-gnome1
or
icewm-menu-gnome2

as files belonging to icewm and they are not on my computer. The gnome USE flag is supposed to cause those scripts to be included in the installation but they are not there.

Something is not right but I don't know what it is. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

[BHReach]

I think I discovered the problem with a partial solution.

I downloaded the icewm source tarball and ran configure:

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./configure --enable-menus-gnome2 --disable-xfreetype --enable-corefonts

and I get the following error:

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./configure: line 6809: pkg-config: command not found
./configure: line 6810: pkg-config: command not found
checking for mkfontdir... no
checking for pkg-config... no
configure: error: gnome 2 can not be found via pkg-config.
*** Install the GNOME�s development packages.


Since icewm is installed with the gnome USE flag, all dependencies should also have been installed; however, that is not the case. There are gnome dependencies which have not been installed. I wasted a lot of time looking through gnome packages trying to find out which one installs pkg-conf without success.

I procured a copy of icewm-menu-gnome2 and copied it to /usr/local/bin and when I launch the X sever, icewm comes up with a lot of programs listed in the menu where as before I had icewm-menu-gnome2 there were none. It does not work perfectly probably because the icewm-menu-gnome2 I procured is a Perl script and the latest version is written in C and gets created when you compile icewm.

I will create a bug report.

[BHReach]

Icewm is not compiled with the gnome switch so the menu creation programs are not included and using the switch requires gnome dependencies so is not really appropriate for a light icewm based desktop, which does not require gnome.

I did some research and found these programs for generating menus for icewm:

icewm-xdg-menu (Python Script)
xdgmenumaker (Python Script)
xdg-menu.py
xdg_menu (Perl Script)
icewm-menu-gnome2
menumaker (Python)

I tried them all, I tested an old Perl script for icewm-menu-gnome2 as mentioned above. All the xdg based ones come up with similar menus, none are as good as the one menumaker creates. I have been using mmaker for years. It is a Python script that has a database of over 600 Linux programs it is aware of and searches your system for the binaries to create the menu. It works with BlackBox, Deskmenu, FluxBox, IceWM, OpenBox(V3), PekWM, WindowMaker, and XFCE(V4).

I use it like this:

I put the following line in my ~/.icewm/menu file and it generates the menu every time I click on the menu button in the lower left corner of the screen. If you install new programs, you do not have to logout to have them show up in the menu.

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menuprog Applications - mmaker -ci icewm