UPDATE-MENUS(S) UPDATE-MENUS(S) NAME update-menus - generate Debian menu system SYNOPSIS update-menus [-v] [-d] [-h] DESCRIPTION Before the advent of update-menus, when the system admin- istrator installed a package onto a Debian system, they would need to edit various window manager configuration files to make the new program show up on, for example, fvwm's menus. The menus could easily become out of sync with what programs were actually available, with some menu items that didn't work, and other programs that lacked a menu entry. update-menus and Debian's menu package aim to solve this problem. update-menus automatically generates menus of installed programs for window managers and other menu programs. It should be run whenever a menufile(e) or menu-method file is changed. update-menus will be ran automatically when Debian packages that contain menu files are installed or removed from the system. update-menus uses the package-supplied menu entry files (in /usr/lib/menu) for it's information about the menus (but this can be overruled by the system administra- tor/user, see below). If a menu entry file is executable, update-menus execute the menu entry file, and use it's stdout to generate the menu database. OPTIONS -v Verbose output. Shows all arguments to the /etc/menu-methods programs. -d Debug output. Generates loads of unintelligible output. -h Display usage help and exit. CONFIGURATION There are several ways to tune the operation of update- menus: per menu entry, in /etc/menu/$package In these directory the system administrator or user can override the default menu files. (if a file /etc/menu/$package exists, than the corresponding /usr/lib/menu/$package file isn't read any more). Users who want to override the system wide defaults put their files in ~/.menu. See also menufile(e) per window-manager in /etc/menu-methods/$wm In these configuration files, one can tune gener- ated "system.rc" files for each individual window manager. For example, one can specify that the wm should ignore any icons that the packages may sup- ply, or set the default wrapper for text-only applications (usually, an xterm is started to run a text-only application like vi). Users who want to override the system wide defaults put their files in ~/.menu-methods. For more info, see /usr/doc/menu/html. globally, in /etc/menu-methods/translate_menus This file contains translations that will be per- formed for all menu entries and all window man- agers. You can specify things like: `All sections that start with "Apps/Games" should be mapped to "Games"', or `menuentryid "gnuplot" should have a title of "GnuTeken" (to translate titles into other other languages)'. Look at the default /etc/menu- methods/translate_menus for an example. Users who want to override the system default translate file, put one in ~/.menu-methods/translate_menus. error report configuring, in /etc/menu-methods/menu.config This file contains general information for the overall behaviour of update-menus. At the moment you can only configure how verbose the output of update-menus is, and where it sends the output. The amount of information is specified by `ver- bosity=VAL'. Use VAL=quite to stop update-menu from reporting anything but the most important errors, VAL=normal, VAL=verbose, VAL=debug for progres- sively more output. To specify where the output should go, use `method=stdout', `method=stderr', or `method=syslog facility priority'. `Facility' is one of auth, authpriv, authcron, authdaemon, authkern, authlo- cal0, authlocal1, authlocal2, authlocal3, authlo- cal4, authlocal5, authlocal6, authlocal7, authlpr, authmail, authnews, authsyslog, authuser, authuucp. `priority' is one of emerg, alert, crit, err, warn- ing, notice, info, debug. FILES Menu files: (Earlier listed directories override those listed later.) ~/.menu/* Menu files added by the user. (Isn't read if root runs update-menus) /etc/menu/* Menu files added by the system administra- tor. /usr/lib/menu/* Menu files provided by other Debian pack- ages. /usr/lib/menu/default/* Menu files provided by the menu package. (These are for packages that don't provide menu entries yet. If you see (or maintain) a package that supplies a menu file in /usr/lib/menu/, please email me and I'll remove that menu file from /usr/lib/menu/default/). Menu methods: /etc/menu-methods/ Executable configuration files that are added by window managers and other menu pro- grams, these files are run by update-menus to generate menus for the different pro- grams. Also in this directory is the trans- late file, used for local configuration of the shape of the menu trees. ~/.menu-methods/ For users to override the system-defaults of /etc/menu-methods. If this directory exists, no files in /etc/menu-methods are read any more. DISTRIBUTION Distribution is subject to the GNU public license. BUGS update-menus may not work properly when run by a normal user, to generate menus for that user. This is usually because the window manager doesn't expect the sys- tem."$wm"rc files in the directory (usually ~/."$wm", con- figurable in /etc/menu-methods). If you see such a thing, and you find a solution, please mail me (joostje@debian.org). It should work OK for fvwm and fvwm2: I usually test the package first as an ordinary user. AUTHOR Joost Witteveen <joostje@debian.org>, original idea by Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi> THANKS To Joey Hess, for a lot of good ideas and pre-release testing, and to Tom Lees for a update-menus in pure C (of which I only used one function, but that's life). (Man page by Joey Hess, <joeyh@master.debian.org>) SEE ALSO menufile(e), /usr/doc/menu/html DEBIAN Debian Utilities UPDATE-MENUS(S)