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:
install -vdm755 /usr/share/applications &&
update-desktop-database /usr/share/applications