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Bug#172436: marked as done (BROWSER and sensible-browser standardization)

Your message dated Sun, 21 Jul 2019 21:08:15 -0700
with message-id <87zhl6679s.fsf@hope.eyrie.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#172436: Updated BROWSER proposal
has caused the Debian Bug report #172436,
regarding BROWSER and sensible-browser standardization
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
172436: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=172436
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.8.0
Severity: normal

As discussed earlier on this list, and now implemented by lots of stuff
in Debian[2] and with only a few to go[3], I'm proposing that the
following be added to policy around section 12.4:

  Web browsers
  ------------

  Some programs have the ability to launch a web browser to display an URL.
  Since there are lots of different web browsers available in the Debian
  distribution, the system administrator and each user should have the
  possibility to choose a preferred web browser.
  
  In addition, programs should choose a good default web browser if none
  is selected by the user or system administrator.
  
  Thus, every program that launches a web browser with an URL must use the
  BROWSER environment variable to determine what browser the user wishes
  to use.
  
  The value of BROWSER may consist of a colon-separated series of browser
  command parts. These should be tried in order until one succeeds. Each command
  part may optionally contain the string "%s"; if it does, the URL to be viewed
  is substituted there. If a command part does not contain %s, the browser is to
  be launched as if the URL had been supplied as its first argument. The string
  %% must be substituted as a single %
  <footnote>
  This browser variable was proposed by Eric Raymond at
  http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/BROWSER/
  </footnote>

  If the BROWSER environment variable is not set, the program should use
  /usr/bin/x-www-browser if there is an available X Window System DISPLAY,
  and /usr/bin/www-browser if not. These two files are managed through the dpkg
  alternatives mechanism. Thus every package providing a general-purpose 
  web browser must call the update-alternatives program to register
  the appopriate one of these alternatives.

  If it is very hard to adapt a program to make use of the BROWSER variable,
  that program may be configured to use /usr/bin/sensible-www-browser
  instead. This is a program provided by the Debian base system that checks
  the BROWSER environment variable, and falls back to /usr/bin/x-www-browser
  or /usr/bin/www-browser if it is not set.

I'm looking for seconds. If you seconded the earlier, informal proposal,
please re-second this formal one.

-- 
see shy jo

[1] sensible-browser http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2002/debian-policy-200211/msg00189.html
[2] debianutils, links, mozilla, urlview, w3m, xchat, xpdf
[3] lynx has a patch in the BTS; konqeror is patched in CVS pending new
    release; any other unmentioned web browsers still need updates as do
    probably still tons of packages that hardcode calls to netscape. Find
    something and I'll gladly patch iT.

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--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Control: tag 172436 = wontfix

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> Here is an updated proposal for wording around BROWSER, the www-browser
> and x-www-browser alternatives, and sensible-browser.  Following the
> discussion of the previous proposal, this downgrades supporting BROWSER
> to a recommendation and downgrades registering the alternatives to
> should from must.  It also documents the behavior of sensible-browser
> with desktop environments.

> Does this answer everyone's objections?  If so, I'm looking for seconds.

The above was in 2008, and there was some discussion at the time that
established we didn't really have consensus on the proposed wording.
There was some subsequent discussion from Jonathan Nieder in 2011 asking
for something somewhat different.  After that, I don't believe the topic
has come up again.

I think it's clear that we're not making forward progress here, and the
lack of a clear specification for the BROWSER environment variable doesn't
seem to be causing a lot of noticable ongoing pain.  I'm therefore going
to close this bug as something on which we've just not reached consensus.

If this is causing problems for anyone else, or if someone wants to pick
up the work for whatever reason, you should still feel free to do so, and
there's a lot of useful information in this bug log.  However, my guess is
that there are more immediately useful things to work on documenting in
Policy.

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

--- End Message ---
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