Desktop Integration (Export)

Put container apps on your host — desktop entries with icons in your launcher, and container tools on your PATH as small shell shims.

Commands

Applications and binaries are declared in the config under [integration.export]:

[integration.export]
apps = ["gedit", "nautilus"]
bins = ["rg", "gcc"]

App Export

podbox export app extracts a desktop application from the container and makes it launchable from the host.

How it works

1. Reads <name>.desktop from the running container: the system application dirs first, then the container user's ~/.local/share/applications, then /opt/*/share/applications.

2. Rewrites Exec= to route through podbox (everything else preserved). TryExec= is dropped (it points inside the container and would hide the launcher) and Icon= is pointed at the copied host icon below:

   ini

   copy

   Exec=gedit %F

   becomes:

   copy

   Exec=podbox --container "myenv" exec -- gedit %F

3. Copies the first matching icon to ~/.local/share/icons/podbox/<container>/<name>.<ext>.

4. Writes ~/.local/share/applications/podbox-<container>-<name>.desktop.

5. Runs update-desktop-database (a failure only warns).

/usr/share/icons/hicolor/{48,64,128,256}x{48,64,128,256}/apps/<name>.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/<name>.svg

MIME types

MimeType= lines carry over unchanged — your desktop registers the container app as a handler, and opening such a file dispatches through the rewritten Exec=. No extra setup.

Binary Export

podbox export bin creates a shell shim so a container binary appears on the host PATH.

Generated shim

A script is written to ~/.local/bin/<name>:

#!/bin/sh
exec podbox --container "<name>" run "<bin>" "$@"

The --container flag pins the target regardless of active context. If ~/.local/bin is on your PATH (most distros do this), the binary just works.

Cleanup

podbox export clean

Removes the container's .desktop files, its icon dir, and any ~/.local/bin shims referencing it.