UPDATE-MENUS
NAME SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION OPTIONS CONFIGURATION FILES DISTRIBUTION BUGS AUTHOR THANKS SEE ALSO
update-menus - generate Debian menu system
Before the advent of update-menus, when the system administrator 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(5) 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 administrator/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.
Verbose output. Shows all arguments to the /etc/menu-methods programs.
Debug output. Generates loads of unintelligible output.
Display usage help and exit.
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/$package file isn't read any more). Users who want to override the system wide defaults put their files in /.menu. See also __menufile(5)?__
per window-manager in /etc/menu-methods/$wm
In these configuration files, one can tune generated
globally, in /etc/menu-methods/translate_menus
This file contains translations that will be performed for all menu entries and all window managers. You can specify things like: `All sections that start with
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 `verbosity=VAL'. Use VAL=quite to stop update-menu from reporting anything but the most important errors, VAL=normal, VAL=verbose, VAL=debug for progressively 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, authlocal0, authlocal1, authlocal2, authlocal3, authlocal4, authlocal5, authlocal6, authlocal7, authlpr, authmail, authnews, authsyslog, authuser, authuucp. `priority' is one of emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice, info, debug.
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 administrator.
/usr/lib/menu/*
Menu files provided by other Debian packages.
/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 programs, these files are run by update-menus to generate menus for the different programs. Also in this directory is the translate 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 is subject to the GNU public license.
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 system. ''
Joost Witteveen
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,
menufile(5), /usr/doc/menu/html
6 pages link to update-menus(1):
