Bug#972578: Broken app favorites in gnome-shell after renaming thunderbird.desktop to net.thunderbird.Thunderbird.desktop

[Michael Biebl]

Package: thunderbird
Version: 1:78.3.3-1
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: pkg-gnome-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org

Hi,

I had pinned thunderbird to the dash as app favorite/bookmark
https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-apps-favorites.html.en

After the upgrade from Thunderbird 68 to 78, this favorite was gone.
Afaics, the problem is, that the name of the desktop file changed from
/usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop to
/usr/share/applications/net.thunderbird.Thunderbird.desktop
so the existing reference was broken.

I see two possible ways to fix this:
a/ Rename the desktop file back to thunderbird.desktop (this is probably
the most suitable action for stable)
b/ Add an explicit mapping to gnome-shell
https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-shell/-/blob/debian/master/js/ui/appFavorites.js#L11

I've CCed the gnome-shell maintainers. Not sure if they are willing to
add non-GNOME apps to that list.

It's likely, that other desktops are affected in a similar way, but I
haven't checked those. I do see a couple of references though at
https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=thunderbird.desktop&literal=1
possibly affecting MATE, Cinnamon, plank.

Regards,
Michael



-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.9.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN, TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages thunderbird depends on:
ii  debianutils         4.11.2
ii  fontconfig          2.13.1-4.2
ii  libatk1.0-0         2.36.0-2
ii  libbotan-2-15       2.15.0+dfsg-2+b1
ii  libbz2-1.0          1.0.8-4
ii  libc6               2.31-4
ii  libcairo-gobject2   1.16.0-4
ii  libcairo2           1.16.0-4
ii  libdbus-1-3         1.12.20-1
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2    0.110-5
ii  libevent-2.1-7      2.1.12-stable-1
ii  libffi7             3.3-4
ii  libfontconfig1      2.13.1-4.2
ii  libfreetype6        2.10.2+dfsg-3
ii  libgcc-s1           10.2.0-15
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0  2.40.0+dfsg-5
ii  libglib2.0-0        2.66.1-2
ii  libgtk-3-0          3.24.23-2
ii  libicu67            67.1-4
ii  libjson-c5          0.15-1
ii  libnspr4            2:4.28-1
ii  libnss3             2:3.56-1
ii  libpango-1.0-0      1.46.2-1
ii  libstdc++6          10.2.0-15
ii  libvpx6             1.8.2-1
ii  libx11-6            2:1.6.12-1
ii  libx11-xcb1         2:1.6.12-1
ii  libxcb-shm0         1.14-2
ii  libxcb1             1.14-2
ii  libxext6            2:1.3.3-1+b2
ii  libxrender1         1:0.9.10-1
ii  psmisc              23.3-1
ii  x11-utils           7.7+5
ii  zlib1g              1:1.2.11.dfsg-2

Versions of packages thunderbird recommends:
ii  hunspell-de-de [hunspell-dictionary]  20161207-8
ii  hunspell-en-us [hunspell-dictionary]  1:2019.10.06-1

Versions of packages thunderbird suggests:
ii  apparmor          2.13.4-3+b1
ii  fonts-lyx         2.3.5.2-1
ii  libgssapi-krb5-2  1.17-10
ii  libgtk2.0-0       2.24.32-4

-- no debconf information