deskbar-applet cannot load icons which is shipped with deskbar-applet.
I check the defs.py and found DATADIR='' but not /usr/share.
The reason is below.
in configure.ac of deskbar-applet 2.16.0,
there is
AS_AC_EXPAND(DATADIR, $datarootdir) , which is expected as /usr/share commonly.
however, datarootdir is nowhere. --datadir= option set $datadir, not
$datarootdir.
so this must be
AS_AC_EXPAND(DATADIR)
I found that my autoconf is 2.59, but deskbar-applet's developer used
autoconf-2.60.
--datarootdir option is appeared at 2.60, so this bug doesn't reproduced at
autoconf-2.60.
so, if you need to re-autoconf this package, must add depent to
>=sys-devel/autoconf-2.60