sensible-browser isn't

[geofft]

On my debathena-cluster machine (currently running production), /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser is a symlink to /usr/bin/xlinks2. This causes applications that use sensible-browser to launch Links instead of Firefox as my browser. Firefox is a more sensible browser.

[jdreed]

This is also true on debathena-workstation, which explains why clicking on a link in gnome-terminal does nothing, but right-clicking on it and choosing "Open Link" opens it in Firefox.

[andersk]

No, clicking a link in gnome-terminal always does nothing. You either need to right-click and select Open Link, or Ctrl+click. This uses the GNOME default browser, not sensible-browser (it would be totally weird if it used a different default browser depending on how you clicked on the link).

Jaunty prefers epiphany-gecko > firefox > xlinks2 for sensible-browser in X. This is controlled by the x-www-browser alternative; see update-alternatives --display x-www-browser.

I don’t think this is actually a problem in practice, because sensible-browser on my machine is epiphany-gecko and I have never seen epiphany-gecko get opened automatically.

[geofft]

"I don't think this is actually a problem in practice"

I noticed it because this is what alpine opens for me.

But, since it's sufficiently rare, _and_ gone in Jaunty, I'm going to close it as WONTFIX.

For what it's worth, it appears to be a packaging bug; late 2.0 / the 2.99 packaging series included a "firefox-trunk" binary that was proto-Firefox 3, with priority 40, but left standard Firefox (2) at priority 70. Then even when Firefox 3 was released, the packaging kept setting that application's priority to 40.

[geofft]

Replying to geofft:

"I don't think this is actually a problem in practice"

I noticed it because this is what alpine opens for me.

I saw it affect someone recently...

But, since it's sufficiently rare, _and_ gone in Jaunty, I'm going to close it as WONTFIX.

I'm not sure why I claimed this; I don't believe it's completely gone in Jaunty.

[geofft]

r23862 is a workaround for this bug; we should revert it when this gets fixed.

[jdreed]

sensible-browser in fact totally sucks, and as such there is no way of starting a useful browser from scripts short of just assuming Firefox.

Athena 9 used to have "htmlview" which was a wrapper guaranteed to exist on Athena. Perhaps we want to write our own htmlview which checks $BROWSER, and then Firefox, and the Mozilla animal of the day, and then gives up and punts to sensible-browser.

Also, we should let upstream know that sensible-browser isn't.

[jdreed]

Evan suggests that this is probably a bug in either xlinks2 or Firefox. We should investigate and report upstream.

We should also verify that this is still broken in Lucid.

[broder]

opus:~ broder$ lsb_release -cs
lucid
opus:~ broder$ update-alternatives --display x-www-browser
x-www-browser - auto mode
 link currently points to /usr/bin/epiphany-browser
/usr/bin/epiphany-browser - priority 85
 slave x-www-browser.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/epiphany-browser.1.gz
/usr/bin/firefox - priority 40
/usr/bin/xlinks2 - priority 69
 slave x-www-browser.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/xlinks2.1.gz
Current `best' version is /usr/bin/epiphany-browser.

Wasn't there a Launchpad bug about this somewhere?

[jdreed]

Upstream has stopped caring, and I have no interest in renewing the wankfest. I currently end up with epiphany. I kind of wonder whether something (extra-software?) should just force x-www-browser to be firefox if alternatives is operating in auto mode. Or we can stop caring and get warm fuzzies from closing a ticket whose number is below 200.

[andersk]

Certainly debathena-email-icon-config should just use xdg-open (which respects the user’s default browser choice) instead of firefox || iceweasel || sensible-browser. Upstream  seems to consider this best practice for desktop apps.

Our only other use of sensible-browser is debathena-alpine-config, which, whatever.