Desktop file doesn't work

Question

I'm trying to make a desktop file for vcvRack. I have the program and other files saved in ~/.Rack/. The program launches fine when I double click it or launch in from terminal using ./Rack.

The file ~/.local/share/applications/Rack.desktop contains the following.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Rack
Comment=bleep bloop
Exec=/home/uname/.Rack/Rack
Icon=/home/uname/.Rack/icon-3.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Music;

It shows up in search with icon and all, but it doesn't actually launch. I've tried chmod +x Rack.desktop and sudo chmod +x Rack.desktop, though I don't think either should be necessary.

I have other nearly identical desktop files for other programs that run fine.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Solution (tl;dr):

Add Path=/home/username/opt/Rack2Free to rack.desktop , i.e. replaced with whatever path you have to the Rack working directory where you'll find the file Rack. Then possibly restart the computer (or log out and in).

Details:

I had the exact same issue with creating a desktop file for VCV Rack. It would show up among other applications when pressing super, but just wouldn't launch (nothing happens). However, launching by running the file ~/opt/Rack2Free/Rack would work.

I solved it with the following rack.desktop file placed in ~/.local/share/applications:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=VCVRack
Exec=/home/username/opt/Rack2Free/Rack
Path=/home/username/opt/Rack2Free
Icon=/home/username/opt/Rack2Free/res/icon.png
Terminal=false
Categories=Audio;Music
Keywords=Music
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.26

The key here is the 'Path'-variable. Before that, when I tried running gtk-launch rack in a terminal (see comments above) I got: ~/opt/Rack2Free/Rack: error while loading shared libraries: libRack.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. So, even though the Exec-path was there, it could not find other files that it needed, so adding that Path to Rack's working directory and restarting the computer did the trick for me.

Note: For some reason before restarting the computer, launching with gtk-launch rack worked, but via launcher, i.e. super button, it did not work. But restarting fixed that.

---

(Also: The errors I mentioned in the comments above I apparently get when running ./Rack anyways, just that I don't usually run it via terminal, so I'm not used to seeing them. They are likely not relevant here but they are:)

MidiInJack::initialize: JACK server not running?
MidiOutJack::initialize: JACK server not running?
RtAudio alsa: _NOT_ running realtime scheduling
RtAudio alsa: _NOT_ running realtime scheduling
ERROR: File doesn't exist or otherwise can't load file
ERROR: File doesn't exist or otherwise can't load file
...