Running from source using a .desktop file

I’m running activitywatch directly from source (latest master) and it is working fine:

$ cd ~/.apps/activitywatch
$ . venv/bin/activate
$ aw-qt

But I obviously don’t want to manually do these steps every time I start my machine. So I created a .desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=ActivityWatch
Exec="/home/dufferzafar/.apps/activitywatch/venv/bin/aw-qt"
Icon=/home/dufferzafar/.apps/activitywatch/aw-qt/media/logo/logo.png
GenericName=Log what you do on your computer.
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Hidden=False
X-KDE-autostart-after=panel
X-KDE-StartupNotify=false
X-KDE-UniqueApplet=true
Categories=Utility;
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

But this .desktop file doesn’t work, I get the following error when trying to launch it:

$ kioclient exec ~/.local/share/applications/activity-watch.desktop

kioclient(13640) ClientApp::kde_open: KUrl("file:///home/dufferzafar/.local/share/applications/activity-watch.desktop")
2018-03-18 11:00:27 [INFO ]: Starting module aw-server  (aw_qt.manager:46)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/dufferzafar/.apps/activitywatch/venv/bin/aw-qt", line 11, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/dufferzafar/.apps/activitywatch/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/aw_qt/main.py", line 19, in main
    _manager.autostart(args.autostart_modules)
  File "/home/dufferzafar/.apps/activitywatch/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/aw_qt/manager.py", line 137, in autostart
    self.start("aw-server")
  File "/home/dufferzafar/.apps/activitywatch/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/aw_qt/manager.py", line 130, in start
    self.modules[module_name].start()
  File "/home/dufferzafar/.apps/activitywatch/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/aw_qt/manager.py", line 59, in start
    self._process = subprocess.Popen(exec_cmd, universal_newlines=True)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/subprocess.py", line 947, in __init__
    restore_signals, start_new_session)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/subprocess.py", line 1551, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception_type(errno_num, err_msg)
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'aw-server'

This is happening because it can’t find aw-server in my $PATH. How can I change the $PATH attribute just for the .desktop file? or maybe there’s some other way to get aw-qt to autostart?

[johan-bjareholt]

We could also ship the AUR package with a .desktop file since we can in that case guarantee the path of the executable.

[ErikBjare]

I consider this solved. The .desktop file shipped with the AUR package should be considered the canonical version.