Unity: how to add a shell-script to the dock

You need to make a shortcut-file. Shortcuts for the Unity dock are located in ~/.local/share/applications/

  1. Create a file myGUIapp.desktop in that directory.

  2. Paste the following into that file (with correct paths for icon and shellscript):

    [Desktop Entry]
    Name=My GUI App
    Exec=/path/to/shellscript.sh
    Icon=/path/to/you/icon.svg
    Terminal=false
    Type=Application
    StartupNotify=true

  3. Make the file executable:

    Right click -> Properties -> Permissions -> Tick ‘Allow executing as a program’

  4. Restart Unity (or drag the file to the Dock to get it there directly).

Look in other files in ~/.local/share/applications/ to get an idea of how they should look. More info is available in this blog entry.

Edit:
If you want the shortcut to be accessable to all users you should check out Ubuntu packaging guide about icons.
Basically the .desktop-file are installed or moved to /usr/share/applications/<binary>.desktop instead and icons are placed in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps