The neovim package installs an nvim.desktop file in .../share/applications/; however, I think this should be optional since it is not necessary if neovim is used only in the terminal. In addition, there are plenty of GUI options for neovim (neovim-gtk, neovim-qt, neovide, etc.)
Thanks for asking this question! I am not too familiar about PR etiquette with nix, so I will defer to others about that. I suppose the question is: are there parallels in other packages, in which the desktop file is optional?
I am curious, though, what advantages there are in removing this file? Put another way, what is a scenario in which a user would desire its removal? Perhaps it is cluttering up the menus, or it doesn’t work as intended?
I doubt there are any conventions about this specific thing since it is such an obscure request. So the decision whether to accept a PR for this feature would fall to the maintainers of the package.
Personally, I would consider the costs compared to benefits (with alternatives in mind) and reject it:
Costs
Added complexity to the package expression.
People might disable the launcher not realizing that it would also break file associations.
Benefits
¿One? user’s non-critical (purely cosmetic) use case would be satisfied.
Alternatives
User can ignore the launcher or move it to a separate screen.
User can do something like the following in their NixOS configuration to hide the launcher from the Shell:
It says “Neovim Wrapper” which is kind of weird. I expect “Neovim”, if anything.
When I double-click it, it opens a very tiny window that is basically unusable (maybe the wrapper doesn’t take my screen resolution into account? See screenshot below.)
I only use vim (or neovim) in CLI scenarios; VSCode covers all of my needs in a graphical context. Having an extra GUI icon for Neovim is not useful to me, so I’m interested in the aesthetics of a clean setup.
EDIT: When I use the app switcher, it shows “xterm” instead of neovim (see additional screenshot below).