what(): Malformed file

[Rojikku]

Version: 3.1-3 off extra

Probably literally #176 as I solved it with that. I just wanted to provide you with a problem-child .desktop to experiment with in fixing the issue.

Note: I swear this wasn't an issue in older versions of j4, and irony doesn't seem to have changed recently, so possibly a regression of some form?

aurto irony-mod-manager-bin 1.26.201-1 [installed] appears to be the problem child for me. I have copied the desktop file, added .txt to the end, and uploaded it, so it should capture any strange characters within the file still.

irony-mod-manager-bin.desktop.txt

[meator]

Fixed in r3.2 release (latest release). The handling of invalid desktop files was changed in the latest release, they are handled more gracefully now. When an invalid desktop file is encountered, j4-dmenu-desktop prints a warning and it skips the desktop file.

The desktop file is provided directly by the irony-mod-manager-bin AUR package, so the AUR is at fault for this. I have reported this to the package maintainer: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/irony-mod-manager-bin#comment-1002157

The faulty file is here (for future reference): https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/irony-mod-manager-bin.desktop?h=irony-mod-manager-bin&id=5cf76a0bdda10eb77083ea1e794570740f51aef3

I have also flagged Arch Linux's j4-dmenu-desktop package as out-of-date.

I am not an Arch Linux user, so I will not pursue this issue further and will leave it to the respective package maintainers.

If the desktop file is located in /usr/share/aplications/, you can most likely solve the problem by copying /usr/share/aplications/irony-mod-manager-bin.desktop to ~/local/share/applications/irony-mod-manager-bin.desktop and then deleting the last blank line of ~/local/share/applications/irony-mod-manager-bin.desktop. The .local/ directory has a higher priority than system directories, so a desktop file with the same name in .local/share/applications/ will take precedence over /usr/share/applications.

The rules may differ if your desktop file is located somewhere else. Please read the j4-dmenu-desktop manpage for more info (especially the ENVIRONMENT section).

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Version: 3.1-3 off extra

Version 3.1-3 is not a valid j4-dmenu-desktop version. Please use j4-dmenu-desktop --version to determine the version. The -3 suffix is specific to Arch Linux and is not related to j4-dmenu-desktop (this is not that big of an issue, but it could help you with writing future bug reports to j4-dmenu-desktop or to other projects).

Please also state the Linux distro you are using when reporting bugs. I was able to infer that you are using Arch Linux. This is particularly relevant to this issue, because it originates from the AUR.

I could create an issue template for these things.

[Zetabite]

Issue is fixed now on the AUR package. Do note, if you use any package older than 1.26.201-2, the issue will persist. You will have to manually fix it in that case.

[meator]

The Arch Linux package of j4-dmenu-desktop was updated, which means that desktop files like the one in this issue will give users a warning message with the filename, line number and the description of the error instead of aborting with a generic error message.

@Zetabite Thank you for your swift response!