Bug#532633: nautilus: moving from desktop_is_home_folder true to false fails (user-dirs.dirs)

[Jon Dowland]

Package: nautilus
Version: 2.24.2-3
Severity: normal

Hi there, for the longest time I've used
desktop_is_home_folder with nautilus. Today I decided to
revert to the default so I flipped the gconf value and
restarted nautilus. To my surprise nautilus continued to
render $HOME onto the desktop.

I find
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdg-user-dirs/+bug/154037>
which describes my problem. I think because I didn't have a
~/Desktop when xdg-user-dirs was introduced, it defined
a variable in ~/.config that said "the desktop is $HOME".
Nautilus is therefore finding $HOME either way.

I'm filing this against nautilus rather than xdg-user-dirs
because this behaviour *seems* to make sense from
xdg-user-dirs POV, and if I remove the file and re-run
xdg-user-dirs-update, it re-assigns desktop to ~/Desktop
(if the folder exists).

It seems to me that if this is the new way of specifying
what the desktop is, nautilus should always display the
desktop and this key should be removed or at least
deprecated. The long description for the key says

    "If set to true, then Nautilus will use the user's home
    folder as the desktop. If it is false, tehn it will use
    ~/Desktop as the desktop".

Which is now false since it will actually use
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR as defined in
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/user-dirs.dirs (and whoever chose that name
is obviously having a hard time giving up file extensions)

In the short term the key long description needs fixing, in
the long term the key needs removing (but I guess that
needs to be thought through carefully)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages nautilus depends on:
ii  desktop-file-utils         0.15-1        Utilities for .desktop files
ii  gnome-control-center       1:2.24.0.1-2  utilities to configure the GNOME d
ii  gvfs                       1.0.3-3       userspace virtual filesystem - ser
ii  libatk1.0-0                1.24.0-2      The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libbeagle1                 0.3.9-1       library for accessing beagle using
ii  libbonobo2-0               2.24.1-1      Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libc6                      2.9-7         GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2                  1.8.6-2+b1    The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libeel2-2.24               2.24.1-2      Eazel Extensions Library (for GNOM
ii  libexempi3                 2.1.0-3       library to parse XMP metadata (Lib
ii  libexif12                  0.6.16-2.1    library to parse EXIF files
ii  libgail-common             2.14.7-5      GNOME Accessibility Implementation
ii  libgail18                  2.14.7-5      GNOME Accessibility Implementation
ii  libgconf2-4                2.24.0-7      GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0                1:2.6.4-1     library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0               2.20.0-2      The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-desktop-2-7       2.24.3-1      Utility library for loading .deskt
ii  libgnome2-0                2.24.1-2      The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0          2.20.1.1-1    A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgnomeui-0               2.24.1-1      The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgtk2.0-0                2.14.7-5      The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libnautilus-extension1     2.24.2-3      libraries for nautilus components 
ii  liborbit2                  1:2.14.17-0.1 libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii  libpango1.0-0              1.24.0-3+b1   Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  librsvg2-2                 2.22.3-2      SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libselinux1                2.0.71-1      SELinux shared libraries
ii  libstartup-notification0   0.9-1         library for program launch feedbac
ii  libtrackerclient0          0.6.92-1      metadata database, indexer and sea
ii  libx11-6                   2:1.2.1-1     X11 client-side library
ii  libxml2                    2.7.3.dfsg-1  GNOME XML library
ii  nautilus-data              2.24.2-3      data files for nautilus
ii  shared-mime-info           0.60-2        FreeDesktop.org shared MIME databa

Versions of packages nautilus recommends:
ii  app-install-dat 2008.11.27               Application Installer Data Files
ii  desktop-base    5.0.5                    common files for the Debian Deskto
ii  eject           2.1.5+deb1+cvs20081104-5 ejects CDs and operates CD-Changer
ii  gnome-mount     0.8-2                    wrapper for (un)mounting and eject
ii  gvfs-backends   1.0.3-3                  userspace virtual filesystem - bac
ii  librsvg2-common 2.22.3-2                 SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  nautilus-cd-bur 2.24.0-2                 CD Burning front-end for Nautilus
ii  synaptic        0.62.5                   Graphical package manager
ii  xdg-user-dirs   0.10-1                   tool to manage well known user dir

Versions of packages nautilus suggests:
ii  eog                          2.24.3.1-1  Eye of GNOME graphics viewer progr
ii  evince [pdf-viewer]          2.24.2-2+b1 Document (postscript, pdf) viewer
ii  totem                        2.24.3-3    A simple media player for the GNOM
pn  tracker                      <none>      (no description available)

-- no debconf information