On Tue, 2012-03-20 at 19:10 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
The usual way to make this selectable is with a parameter for the
package's configure script, something like --disable-desktop-update .
These days, it seems like very few packages need this any more. I don't
know if upstreams have just stopped doing update-desktop-database at
install time, or if they mostly somehow dynamically detect whether to do
this or not.
The best way is to test in the Makefile(.am) for $(DESTDIR), and skip
the call if it's set.