Bug#648271: [debian-policy] 11.8.3 "Packages providing a terminal emulator" says xterm passes -e option straight to exec

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

> For what it's worth, Russ's text already seems clear to me.  If relaxing
> the requirement by allowing use of some mechanism other than execve to
> run these commands is desirable, something like the following might do.

>     Support the command-line option "-e <command>", which creates a new
>     terminal window and runs the specified command.  <command> may be
>     multiple arguments, which form the argument list to the executed
>     program.  In other words, the behavior is as though the arguments
>     were passed directly to execvp, bypassing the shell.  (xterm's
>     behavior of falling back on using the shell if -e had a single
>     argument and exec failed is permissible but not required.)

I like this wording better, and I think it also addresses Thomas's concern
about not specifying the path searching behavior, although it might be
even better to say:

    Support the command-line option "-e <command> <arg> ...", which [...]

Either way, seconded.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>