The recent upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin left me somewhat hanging when it comes to creating launchers on the desktop, and also in the Unity Launcher (also called quicklaunch in some places) for Zend Studio and PHPStorm. In Gnome prior to Unity in Ubuntu it was easy to right click the desktop and select Create Launcher to create icons on the desktop to launch applications or scripts, but in 12.04 that options is gone. So here is how I solved some of the issues.

Method 1

For Netbeans and Eclipse based editors like Zend Studio or Aptana it is not too bad. I created a *.desktop files for each one and put it in the /usr/share/applications/ folder. I believe you can also create a folder in /home/username/.local/applications/ and put it there instead, but I have not tested it. Here is how I created a zendstudio.desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Zend Studio
GenericName=Zend Studio
X-GNOME-FullName=Zend Studio PHP IDE
Comment=PHP IDE for PHP development
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Development;PHP;IDE;Programming
Exec=/home/username/Zend/ZendStudio-9.0.2/ZendStudio
TryExec=/home/username/Zend/ZendStudio-9.0.2/ZendStudio
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Icon=/home/username/Zend/ZendStudio-9.0.2/icon.xpm

After creating the file above I then launched Zend Studio by going to the Zend folder in my home directory and double clicking the ZendStudio executable. Once the application is running I right clicked the icon in the Unity Launcher and select “Lock to Launcher”. Now the application stays in the Unity Launcher.

The above worked for most applications, but did NOT work for PHPStorm which launches by using a shell script named PhpStorm.sh. I tried doing the method above, and I also tried creating the desktop file and then dragging and dropping it to the Launcher, and that did not work either.

Method 2

Another method I found was to install the ‘gnome-panel’ package. (Actually it was already installed on my system for some reason.)

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-panel

With the gnome-panel I was now able to create a launcher on the desktop using the command below.

gnome-desktop-item-edit ~/Desktop/ --create-new

In the create launcher dialog I filled it out as follows:
Type: Application
Name: PhpStorm
Command: /bin/bash /home/username/PhpStorm/PhpStorm-117.257/bin/phpstorm.sh

NOTE: You could use /bin/sh or whatever shell you use. I use bash so that is why I put /bin/bash.

To create a shortcut in the Unity Launcher I double clicked the new desktop launcher I created above. (NOTE: If you start PHPStorm by executing the phpstorm.sh you do not get any options at all when right clicking the icon in the Unity Launcher.) Then when PHPStorm was running I was then able to right click on the icon in the Unity Launcher and selected “Lock to Launcher”. Voila! Now I have phpstorm on the Unity Launcher.

Method 3

This option is built right into PHPStorm v4.0.1 (I am not sure about other versions). The wonderful people at JetBrains created a handy item in Tools to automatically create a menu item for you. Simply click on Tools->Create Desktop entry… and the IDE will create an icon in the Dash menu, but not in the Unity Launcher. However, by starting the JetBrains PhpStorm IDE from the Unity Dash you can then right click on the icon that shows up in the Unity Launcher and select “Lock to Launcher”. The icon now stays there, even after a reboot/logout.

Update:

Method 4

See comment to this post below by Shinybird on using Ubuntu Tweak. (Not sure if it works, but it sounds good.)

Enjoy!!!