I want to set the 'Path' variable in a .desktop file relative to the location where the desktop file is located and I can't manage to do that.
When I don't declare it or set it to blank it defaults to my home folder no matter where I run it from; and it doesn't accept values relative to my current location within the file system.
You can kludge around this by using an in-line bash mini-script on your Exec. This will add the .desktop file's path to PATH prior to running your command.
Exec=bash -c "export PATH=$PATH:`dirname %k`; your_command"
%k will be substituted by the path of the desktop file itself. The dirname command chops off the filename part, leaving only the directory. Once PATH is set like this, your_command can be invoked without a full path.
You cannot set the CWD inside a .desktop file. If you want an application to have a specific CWD, you will need to write a simple wrapper script for the application, that looks something like this:
#!/bin/sh
(cd /where/you/want/it/to/be && exec your_program)
You can replace your_program there with $@ and run the script with your_program as an argument, like run-in-dir.sh your_program. This way you can use the same script to wrap any program you want to start in that directory.
I used this:
Exec=bash -c 'cd $(dirname %k) && ./SCRIPT_NAME'
The %k is the full name of the .desktop file including its path. It's then used by dirname to get a location and change directory to that location. Finally, now that it's in the right place, it finds the script and runs it.
This worked for me Ubuntu 14.04:
Exec=bash -c "cd %k && ./app.run"
Latest spec says that %k points to the location of the desktop file:
%k - The location of the desktop file as either a URI (if for example gotten from the vfolder system) or a local filename or empty if no location is known.
For directory names with spaces in the name, this finally worked for me:
Exec=/bin/bash -c 'cd "$(dirname "$0")"; wine game.exe -windowed' %k
