Custom desktop file creation is not compliant with the standard when spaces are involved in Exec (and maybe other reserved characters)

[jmholla]

I discovered this will using the Albert launcher's applications plugin. When you create a custom launcher with the Menu editor, if that executable has spaces in the path, the created desktop file escapes it as so:

Exec=/path\\ with/spaces

But, the desktop file specification says:

Arguments may be quoted in whole. If an argument contains a reserved character the argument must be quoted. The rules for quoting of arguments is also applicable to the executable name or path of the executable program as provided.
[...] Reserved characters are space (" "), tab, newline, double quote, single quote ("'"), backslash character (""), greater-than sign (">"), less-than sign ("<"), tilde ("~"), vertical bar ("|"), ampersand ("&"), semicolon (";"), dollar sign ("$"), asterisk ("*"), question mark ("?"), hash mark ("#"), parenthesis ("(") and (")") and backtick character ("`").

So, the resulting file should actually have the following line:

Exec="/path with/spaces"

Related bug reports:

• "Starting detached process failed." when Exec has escaped spaces albertlauncher/albert-plugin-applications#13
• DesktopEntryParser does not process escaped spaces in Exec correctly albertlauncher/albert#1596

[jmholla]

It looks like someone else may have tracked this down to the webapp-manager repository. I don't believe this repository actually formats the desktop files and uses alacarte, but I had to break off my investigation. Hopefully, I'll be able to get back to it soon.