merge sensible-browser in xdg-open AKA how to select the "best" browser
Hi all,
this comes from #539191 and the discussion that generated on #d-devel.
With Clint (s-b maintainer) we seem to agreed that since:
- xdg-open identifies the preferred browser the user selected in his
DE environment (like Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc)
- s-b relies on alternatives, that might differ from users selection
- xdg-open falls back to s-b in case it's not in a DE env
we can merge the s-b code into x-o.
Right when I was about to reassign the bug (with the above reasoning)
I received a "please don't".
AFAIUI the main reasoning behind this requests is that x-o can also
open files with the preferred application and not only URLs, and that
can be a sort of "security problem" (for example x-o a
malicious/dangerous file instead of a URL). But a reply from the
originator is welcome to clarify it :)
Honestly, I don't that problem (but it won't surprise anyone if I'm
wrong) because it's something similar to double-click on a
malicious/dangerous executable in a file manager, hence why I wanted
to bring this to a wide audience. The questions are:
- do you think that converge to x-o as the default way to open a
browser is something interesting? (merging s-b into x-o)
- do the addition of a "--browser" option to x-o (or a xdg-browser
symlink to x-o and the latter to recognize the exec called and act
accordingly) might be a solution to the above problem (if a problem
exists)?
Thanks for your feedback.
Have fun,
--
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi
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