Executable desktop files

[Guido Berhoerster]

With Thunar 1.6 (bug #5012) there is a big security warning when
trying to run .desktop files which do not have the executable bit
set. This is currently not the case for .desktop files created by
a user via exo-desktop-item-edit ileading to reports like
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=801326.
I suppose exo-desktop-item-edit could be patched to mark files as
executable by default but there does not seem to be a consensus
among different DEs about this behavior so it is still
problematic for .desktop files created by another DE, another
editor or some installation script. I wonder if there isn't
better solution to this or if we can at least get some common way
of handling this among DEs?  Somewhat related to .desktop files
is how scripts and binaries are treated by default in Thunar, it
is very easy to inadvertedly run a script or binary instead of
opening it in Thunar it since there is no visual indication
whether a script or binary is executable and there is no further
confirmation dialog or feedback.
-- 
Guido Berhoerster