Scope naming breaks XDG portals

[waltmck]

I would like to use runapp as my global launcher (with rofi). However, for XDG desktop portals to work, application scopes need to have a specific format:

app-<launcher>-<AppID>-<random>.scope

You use basename(argv[0]) as your AppID, when the standard requires that the desktop entry ID be used instead (this lets the portal know which org.freedesktop.Application to activate on button click).

Unfortunately, it is difficult to comply with the standard given that you wouldn't like to support running .desktop files directly. Two alternatives:

• Do a reverse lookup to find a desktop entry with matching Exec=, and use that as AppID to name the scope
• Allow users to override the AppID name as a way of scripting around the problem.

Let me know if either of these would be reasonable.

[c4rlo]

So runapp follows https://systemd.io/DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENTS/#xdg-standardization-for-applications to build the unit name. With --scope, per that spec it that takes the form:

app[-<launcher>]-<ApplicationID>-<RANDOM>.scope

<ApplicationID> is derived from the DESKTOP_ENTRY_ID environment variable, if set (after removing its .desktop suffix). If that env var is unset then as you mention runapp uses basename(argv[0]) (which in fact is suggested by the above systemd.io doc).

DESKTOP_ENTRY_ID is used because the fuzzel launcher sets that (implemented it in https://codeberg.org/dnkl/fuzzel/pulls/666). I'm not aware of other launchers setting it, but doing so seem desirable to me.

So one option here could be to try and get rofi to follow fuzzel in setting it.

Meanwhile, you can set this yourself, e.g.:

$ DESKTOP_ENTRY_ID=org.example.MyApp.desktop runapp myapp

We could also potentially consider adding a new runapp --app-id= option, though not sure if it's worth it at the moment.

---

Regarding your statement that:

the standard requires that the desktop entry ID be used [for the ApplicationID] (this lets the portal know which org.freedesktop.Application to activate on button click)

Could you elaborate on which standard (or otherwise reliable source) says that? The closest I can see is https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/api-reference.html saying:

Registering a host app with XDG Desktop Portal overwrites the automatic detection based on the XDG cgroup pathname standardization for applications.

Which just links to the systemd doc again without explaining what the "automatic detection" does.

[waltmck]

I think that I wasn't correct about there being a standard: the basename(argv[0]) naming definitely does comply with the XDG standardization described in the systemd docs you link. However, the XDG desktop portal really needs a desktop entry name (i.e. org.gnome.clocks instead of gnome-clocks) in order to associate the cgroup with an org.freedesktop.Application application.

I tried your suggestion with DESKTOP_ENTRY_ID. I made sure that gnome-clocks wasn't already running, and then ran

DESKTOP_ENTRY_ID=org.gnome.clocks runapp gnome-clocks

The name of the resulting scope was app-Hyprland-gnome-clocks@01cb66e52c4b9395.service, not app-Hyprland-org.gnome.clocks@01cb66e52c4b9395.service as I would expect from your comment. Is this unexpected on runapp 0.5.1?

[c4rlo]

Try appending ".desktop".

I just confirmed that works:

$ DESKTOP_ENTRY_ID=org.example.MyApp.desktop runapp echo hello
$ journalctl -o with-unit --no-hostname -n 1
Fri 2026-07-24 13:14:49 BST user@1000.service/app-sway-org.example.MyApp@9073a22fc8a6e2c0.service[5976]: hello