menufile(5)

Usage

~/.menu/*

/etc/menu/*

/usr/lib/menu/*

/usr/share/menu/*

/usr/share/menu/default/*

Overview

Menu files add entries to the Debian menu system. The system administrator can place menu files in /etc/menu/ to override menu files that packages add to /usr/share/menu/. The user can place menu files in ~/.menu/ to override all other menu files.

Please read the Debian menu manual available in /usr/share/doc/menu/html for the complete specification of menu files.

The menu files are usually named after the Debian package that contains the programs listed in them. In it, you can list several "menu entries" that specify a specific item in the menu structure. Each menu entry specifies which packages it depends on; if that package are not installed, the menu entry will be ignored by update-menus(1). (In a menu entry you can specify pseudo-packages that start with "local."; update-menus will always use those menu entries). If you wish to remove an item from the menu entirely, make an empty menu file with the same name as the file you want to override.

Examples

Dosemu could install the following menu file as /usr/share/menu/dosemu:

 ?package(dosemu):needs="text" section="Applications/Emulators" \
title="Dosemu" command="dosemu"
 ?package(dosemu):needs="X11" section="Applications/Emulators" \
title="Dosemu" command="xdos"

The system administrator wants to override this file to change how dosemu is run, so /etc/menu/dosemu is created:

 ?package(dosemu):needs="text" section="Applications/Emulators" \
title="Dosemu" command="dosemu -A"
 ?package(dosemu):needs="X11"  section="Applications/Emulators" \
title="Dosemu" command="xdos -A"

A user does not want Dosemu to appear in the menus at all, so the user creates an empty file named ~/.menu/dosemu.

Format

A menu file consists of 0 or more lines of the following format:

?package(package-name):var1=value1 var2=value2 ...

needs

Specify what kind of environment the program require. This variable must be defined, and should be one of the following:

needs="text": Program requires a terminal

needs="x11": Program requires a X server

needs="vc": Program requires a Linux console (i.e.: svgalib programs)

needs="wm": The program is a window manager.

needs="fvwmmodule": The program is a fvwm compatible module.

section: The section in which the menu entry should appear. See MENU LAYOUT for preferred section names.

icon: An icon for this menu entry. If no icon is available, just don't define this.

title: The title of the program that will appear on the menus. Keep it short. If two menu entries share the same title and section, the one that best fits the available display will be used. So in the example above with two menu entries that both have the menu id "title", if X is available, the X11 one will be used; otherwise the text one will be used. Must be defined.

command: The command to be executed when this menu entry is selected.

hints: A comma-separated list of hints on how grouping menu entries; see the manual.

Menu layout

The authoritative list of Debian's menu structure is maintained in the Debian Menu sub-policy document which is part of the Debian Policy package. The menu structure below is included only for convenience. Please do not put your packages into any other sections.

Use `/' to separate sub-menu names, for example, "Applications/Editors" or "Games/Arcade".

Applications
Accessibility
Amateur Radio
Data Management
Editors
Education
Emulators
File Management
Graphics
Mobile Devices
Network
Communication
File Transfer
Monitoring
Web Browsing
Web News
Office
Programming
Project Management
Science
Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry
Data Analysis
Electronics
Engineering
Geoscience
Mathematics
Medicine
Physics
Social
Shells
Sound
System
Administration
Hardware
Language Environment
Monitoring
Package Management
Security
Terminal Emulators
Text
TV and Radio
Viewers
Video
Web Development
Games
Action
Adventure
Blocks
Board
Card
Puzzles
Simulation
Strategy
Tools
Toys
Help
Screen
Saving
Locking
Window Managers
FVWM Modules
Window Maker

Notes

If you want to specify an icon or hotkey for a sub-menu (for example, the Editors sub-menu), just use the same syntax but leave the command empty:

?package(mypackage):needs="X11" section="Applications" \
 icon="/usr/share/pixmaps/icon.xpm" hotkey="E" title="Editors"

Whenever any menu files are changed, you must run update-menus(1)

Files

(Earlier listed files override later files with the same names.)

~/.menu/*

Menu files added by the user.

/etc/menu/*

Menu files added by the system administrator.

/usr/lib/menu/*

Architecture-dependant menu files provided by other Debian packages.

/usr/share/menu/*

Architecture-independant menu files provided by other Debian packages.

/usr/share/menu/default/*

Menu files provided by the menu package.

Releases

16 releases since Debian 1.3 (Bo); the text changed 8 times.

Referred to by

wm2-menu(1) start menu's for wm2 window manager. wm2-menu(1x) start menu's for wm2 window manager. su-to-root(1) A simple script to give an `interactive' front-end to su. It can be used in menu entry commands to ask for the root password install-menu(1) Process a menu method and generate the menu files for a window manager or a menu-aware application. update-menus(1) generate Debian menu system dh_installmenu(1) install Debian menu files into package build directories wm-menu-config(1) Should be called in maintainer postinst and postrm scripts of Debian packages that install window managers or other programs that read menus (like pdmenu). install-fvwmgenmenu(1) install-fvwmgenmenu.sh(1) wm-menu-config(8) This script was called in maintainer postinst and postrm scripts of Debian packages that install window managers or other programs that read menus (like pdmenu). It is now deprecated since it was broken by design: it is not available when menu is not installed, but it should be.