Put OBJS before LIBS on the commandline to make things work better. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768142
To make gnome-shell use the desktop file and icon for this example while running it uninstalled, do the following: mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications sed -e "s#@bindir@#$PWD#" exampleapp.desktop \ > ~/.local/share/applications/lt-exampleapp.desktop mkdir -p ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps cp exampleapp.png ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps