Parrot menu

Parrot menu provides the Parrot-specific desktop menu integration used by Parrot GNU/Linux editions.

It ships Freedesktop menu definitions, desktop directory metadata, managed desktop entries, icon assets, and two helper binaries:

• update-launchers, which keeps managed launchers in /usr/share/applications aligned with installed packages.
• parrot-exec, which is the execution wrapper used by Parrot desktop entries.

Package split

The source package builds two binary packages:

• parrot-menu provides the common menu infrastructure, parrot-exec, update-launchers, the complete launcher catalog, menu definitions, desktop integration files, and the apt hook. It is suitable for every Parrot edition.
• parrot-menu-security provides a policy preset that exposes install-on-demand launchers for security tools that are not installed.

Parrot Home Edition installs only parrot-menu by default, while the Security Edition adds parrot-menu-security through its metapackage. The policy package does not install security tools: it only shows or hides launchers for tools that are not installed.

Managed desktop launchers

Desktop entries managed by update-launchers must be stored in either desktop-files-common/ or desktop-files/, and their filenames must start with parrot- or serv-.

Desktop entries tied to an installable package must define:

X-Parrot-Package=foo

foo is the binary package that provides the primary command launched by that desktop entry. The field supports a single binary package only.

Launchers that are always available must omit X-Parrot-Package and define:

X-Parrot-Managed=true

During launcher refreshes, update-launchers queries dpkg's current package state with dpkg-query:

• if foo is installed, the real desktop file is copied atomically to /usr/share/applications;
• if foo is not installed and installable launchers are enabled, a [not installed] launcher points to parrot-exec --install foo; generated labels discard descriptive suffixes and are limited to 40 characters;
• if foo is not installed and installable launchers are disabled, its managed launcher is removed from /usr/share/applications.

Launcher writes are skipped when the generated content is unchanged and are performed with a temporary file plus atomic rename when an update is needed.

Package presets are loaded in filename order from /usr/share/parrot-menu/config.d/*.conf. The base preset disables installable launchers and the security preset enables them. An administrator can override both in /etc/parrot-menu/launcher.conf:

ShowInstallableLaunchers=false

Run sudo /usr/share/parrot-menu/update-launchers after changing the local configuration.

Common launchers should use standard Freedesktop categories. Security launchers can use Parrot-specific categories defined by the menu files.

To hide a launcher, ship a managed desktop file with NoDisplay=true.

Troubleshooting

Reset KDE Plasma menu size

Plasma's classic Application Menu (org.kde.plasma.kicker) can retain an enlarged popup after displaying long labels. Current generated launchers are bounded, but older versions or other desktop entries can still trigger this. update-launchers reloads the KDE application cache but never edits Plasma geometry.

The Parrot default Kicker geometry is 300 by 439 pixels. Find the Kicker applet IDs before resetting it:

grep -B2 -A8 'plugin=org.kde.plasma.kicker' \
    ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc

The stock Parrot layout uses containment 73 and applet 101. If the IDs in the output differ, substitute them in these commands:

config=plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc
cp "$HOME/.config/$config" "$HOME/.config/$config.bak"
systemctl --user stop plasma-plasmashell.service
kwriteconfig6 --file "$config" \
    --group Containments --group 73 --group Applets --group 101 \
    --group Configuration --key popupWidth 300
kwriteconfig6 --file "$config" \
    --group Containments --group 73 --group Applets --group 101 \
    --group Configuration --key popupHeight 439
systemctl --user start plasma-plasmashell.service

Icon generation

menu-icons/hicolor/256x256/apps is the source directory for app icons.

Regenerate all derived icon sizes from the 256x256 sources:

make icons

Import one or more PNG files and generate only their derived sizes:

make icons IMAGES="/path/to/icon.png /path/to/another-icon.png"

For compatibility, IMAGE=/path/to/icon.png also works for a single icon.

Imported icons are copied to the 256x256 source directory, resized to 256x256 when needed, then emitted as 16, 22, 24, 32, and 48 pixel variants, including their @2 HiDPI versions.

Preview the generated files without modifying the tree:

python3 generate_icons.py --dry-run
python3 generate_icons.py --dry-run /path/to/icon.png

generate_icons.py requires Pillow (python3-pil on Debian).

Building

Build the helper binaries:

make binary

This creates:

• build/update-launchers
• build/parrot-exec
• build/parrot-ls, a compatibility symlink to parrot-exec

Build the Debian package with the standard packaging workflow:

dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc