Offer to generate a `.desktop` file when first running the AppImage

[AleMunin]

Have you checked for existing feature requests?

• Completed

Summary

Hi, I am testing IDEs on linux, would be great for you guys is generating your own .desktop file.

Not a dealbreaker, but I figured I might as well share.

What benefits does this feature provide?

Appimages do not integrate well with the system, so there is a chance people will choose to use the software from the unofficial flatpak instead just for convenience, and from the get go that version has at least two bugs right off the bat.

Any alternatives?

Well, the .deb for my case of course should take care of that, but not being linked to a package manager usually results in not being too happy to troubleshoot and uninstall when things go wrong.

Of course you can always replace the appImage for an official flatpak, to be the universal way of running the app on any distro, but I believe that would just add a lot of work when just creating a file can solve the issue forever.

Other examples:

Theia IDE does that. I actually didn't know appImages could prompt to do this (though it makes sense they should, nobody does that).

It does prompt right away, so maybe a little setting or notification would be ideal, I doubt most people want to deal with the hassle of deleting the .desktop or changing it to stop having the icon look for something that was moved out from the download folder.

[savetheclocktower]

Offhand I have no idea how to do this, but it's certainly a good idea — and if another IDE does it, then we can certainly use that for reference. Thanks for the suggestion!

[AleMunin]

They're basically indexed at ~/.local/share/applications/, .desktop files are just .ini files under a trench coat that tell what category it should appear on a menu, where the app is located and where you can find the icon.

Just beware with listing what kind of files it can open. The reason I know those things is because the OS refused to let drag and drop files because Aseprite didn't list on its official .desktop file.

Thanks for taking the time reading my suggestion.

[confused-Techie]

Just to offer my two cents into this, seems Theia IDE has their electron-builder config here, although it doesn't show anything for a .desktop file.

But if we wanted to offer the creation of this file seems it can easily be added into electron-builder. So seems simple enough

[AleMunin]

Had zero idea electron offered that. Nice catch