From mad-developer Makefile (prefix tabs removed

mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)/usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps
cp mad-developer-64.png $(DESTDIR)/usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/mad-developer.png
mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)/usr/share/applications/hildon
cp mad-developer.desktop $(DESTDIR)/usr/share/applications/hildon
mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)/usr/share/dbus-1/services
cp mad-developer.service $(DESTDIR)/usr/share/dbus-1/services

And you need to be very careful with desktop and service files
(make sure lines do not have trailing whitespace...)

contents of mad-developer.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Mad Developer
Exec=/var/local/mad-developer-home/bin/mad-developer
Icon=mad-developer
X-Window-Icon=mad-developer
X-Window-Icon-Dimmed=mad-developer
X-Osso-Service=com.nokia.mad_developer
X-Osso-Type=application/x-executable

and mad-developer.service

[D-BUS Service]
Name=com.nokia.mad_developer
Exec=/var/local/mad-developer-home/bin/mad-developer


(I used to have com.nokia.mad_developer written as
com.nokia.mad-developer -- and this did not work.
of course, how stupid of me! Developer error ;/ )

mad-developer-launcher.c has additionally:

osso_context_t *
osso_context = osso_initialize("com.nokia.mad_developer","1.0",1, null);

this is compiled with `mad pkg-config --cflags --libs libosso`
used in command line.

I also recall, that just mad_developer does not work.
foobar.mad_developer might, if used consistently everywhere.