Wrapper around desktop-file-install to edit Ubuntu launchers (`.desktop` files aka shortcuts)

edit-launcher.sh

#!/bin/bash

LOC="$HOME/.local/share/applications"

OOPS()
{
echo "OOPS: $*" >&2
exit 1
}

edit()
{
f="$1"
case "$f" in
*..*)			OOPS "illegal path: $1";;
*/applications/*/*)	OOPS "wrong path: $1";;
*/applications/*)	;;
*/*)			OOPS "wrong path: $1";;
*)			f="$LOC/${f%.desktop}.desktop"; [ -s "$f" ] || { ls -al "$LOC" >&2; OOPS "not found: $1"; };;
esac
[ -s "$f" ] || OOPS "unknown: $1"

TMP="$(mktemp -d)"
n="$TMP/${f##*/}"
cp -f "$f" "$n"
while	vim "$n"
	echo "$?: $n"
	desktop-file-install --delete-original --dir="`dirname "$f"`" "$n"
	rmdir "$TMP" && return
	read
do
	:
done
}

edit "$1"

Thanks to http://askubuntu.com/a/447703 and desktop-file-install the changes update immediately in Compiz.

BUGs:

• Rough write. Beware! The target .desktop file is deleted before install of the new one. If the new one contains errors, the previous version vanishes unseen. You will find it in the /tmp/ directory somewhere (but /tmp/ is meant to be erased on reboots!) in such a case. This is a design flaw.
• This script loops (just press return after reading the messages) until all errors in the .desktop file are fixed. If you want to break the loop, press ^D (EOF) after leaving the editor, but this will kill the original .desktop file, see previous point.

Missing features:

• Create a launcher from scratch
• Remove a launcher (from the Ubuntu-launcher as well)

License:

• CLL (free as in free beer, free speech and free people), see http://permalink.de/tino/cll

How to add such a .desktop file to the Ubuntu launcher if it is missing:

• Give it a easy to find name
• Type the name in Dash
• Select it from there
• Lock it to launcher

How to use this:

• Just run the scripts to see a list of your own launchers
• Then give the basename of your own launcher (or the full path) to this script
• Edit it - this uses vim. If you like another editor, replace this. Perhaps replace vim in the script with editor.
• You probably can edit /usr/share/applications/*.desktop files if you run it sudo (never been tested!), but you shouldn't.
• Instead, copy them to ~/.local/share/applications/ first and edit them there. But this, again, has not been tested.