Where and how do I create new system-wide menu items for CentOS/RH 5?

Question

I have some CentOS 5.5 systems. I have installed the rdesktop rpm, however no entry appears to be made in the gnome or kde menus for it.

Where is the menu structure in the filesystem? Is it one location shared for both Gnome and KDE installations, or are they in separate places?

I am presuming that once I find this structure, I can copy an existing entry and point it at my newly installed program (rdesktop in this case). I want to do this so that I can do it automatically at kickstart time in the future. Is this a bad assumption? Should I do this another way?

Update: It turns out rdesktop actually did install an icon, intuitively named "krdc". But the general question stands.

Answer 1

According to the Freedesktop specification, which both GNOME and KDE support, the recommended filesystem locations for placing .desktop files are:

• /usr/share/applications for system-wide menu items;

• ~/.local/share/applications for user-private menu items.

The command-line utility xdg-desktop-menu is provided to install .desktop files in a specific submenu (identified by a .directory file).