Curated Apps catalog: host fixtures

Evidence class: host (x86_64 compile of the production launcher sources and GLib desktop provider against isolated XDG directories). No board, panel, touch or cross-build is claimed. Recorded 2026-09-28T13:54Z on branch close/shell-umbrella.

Change: the-launcher-explains-app-actions, tasks 1.1 and 1.2.

What changed

• nix/touch-launcher/catalog.c holds a small curated policy table keyed by desktop-entry ID. footclient.desktop and foot-server.desktop are suppressed. foot.desktop (“Plain terminal”) and htop.desktop (“Process viewer”) duplicate the built-in Terminal and Monitor rows, so they are demoted after every other entry. Unknown entries are retained under their own name. Their description comes from Comment=, then GenericName=, then “Installed application”. GLib still does discovery, should_show and launching. The launcher does not parse Exec.
• nix/touch-launcher/touch-launcher.c renders the curated label and hint instead of the fixed “Installed application” text. After a failed launch it shows Could not open <label> · Back returns to Apps. The raw GLib message, which can contain a filesystem path, goes only to stderr/journal.
• The built-in Terminal, Monitor, New terminal and Help rows are unchanged, and so are the footer Previous/Back/Next controls, which every Apps page draws.

Commands and results

$ python3 tests/test_desktop_catalog.py -v
test_curation_applies_after_refresh ... ok
test_curation_suppresses_endpoints_demotes_duplicates_and_retains_unknown ... ok
test_escaped_names_do_not_break_catalogue_records ... ok
test_failed_launch_reports_short_copy_without_raw_path ... ok
test_glib_launch_preserves_argv_fields_and_working_directory ... ok
test_visibility_precedence_add_remove_and_hidden_override ... ok
Ran 6 tests — OK

$ python3 tests/test_launcher_navigation.py -v
test_threshold_dominance_cancellation_and_overview_bounds ... ok
A failed curated launch leaves the page model intact and Back usable. ... ok
test_help_return_page_bounds_and_desktop_action_indexes ... ok
Compile the production client helpers and exercise their child boundary. ... ok
Ran 4 tests — OK

The following suites also compile touch-launcher.c and still pass: tests/test_shell_routes.py (route-socket), tests/test_shell_gestures.py, tests/test_shell_icons.py (8) and tests/test_shell_appearance_receiver.py (6).

Limits

• The failed-launch fixture makes GLib’s spawn fail with a missing Path= working directory. It checks that stdout carries only the short copy and no /, and that the raw diagnostic is on stderr.
• The Back route after a failure is tested in the page model (navigation.h). Its rendered visibility and 56 px target on the panel are not tested here. They belong to board task 2.2.
• nix build .#touch-launcher (task 2.1) has not been run. A dry run lists 12 riscv64 derivations to build, including cairo, pango, librsvg and json-glib, and that needs the shared build slot.