Configuration Information
The
XDG Base Directory specification defines the standard
locations for applications to place data and configuration files.
These files can be used, for instance, to define the menu
structure and menu items in a desktop environment.
The default location for configuration files to be installed is
/etc/xdg
, and the default locations
for data files are /usr/local/share
and /usr/share
. These locations can
be extended with the environment variables XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
and XDG_DATA_DIRS
, respectively. The GNOME, KDE
and XFCE environments respect
these settings.
When a package installs a .desktop
file to a location in one of the base data directories, the
database that maps MIME-types to available applications can be
updated. For instance, the cache file at /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache
can be
rebuilt by executing the following command as the root
user:
update-desktop-database /usr/share/applications