Comment 2 for bug 1058386

Hi Jim, thanks for reporting the crash. The attached branch fixes the issue.

I disagree on allowing to pass desktop filenames. The messaging menu uses g_desktop_app_info_new, which follows the XDG spec for desktop files. This is useful for distributors and users to override desktop files.

Passing paths directly can also be misused easily: only correctly installed applications should ever be shown in the messaging menu, so that users can find the same application in the dash.

> We like to be able to build, run, and test our apps from the build directory.

Easiest would be to copy the desktop file into ~/.local/share/applications/ temporarily. Alternatively, you could restart indicator-messages-service with XDG_DATA_DIRS set to the source path of your application.