When chromium is the only browser installed, i'm still asked to make it the default

Just by way of explaining what it does now, not necessarily what needs to be done to fix this bug:

It calls xdg-settings (/usr/lib/chromium-browser/xdg-settings) to check if it's the default. In the GNOME environment, it will check /desktop/gnome/applications/browser, /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http, and /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https as well as call "xdg-mime query defaults text/html" which checks /usr/share/applications/defaults.list. So at least all 3 of those must be set correctly. And for the gconf keys, it must be the full path to the executable.

So I would argue that it should be querying /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser
first, and if it isn't set the default there, then fall back to the other
environment checks.

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 09:59, Michael Terry <email address hidden>wrote:

> Just by way of explaining what it does now, not necessarily what needs
> to be done to fix this bug:
>
> It calls xdg-settings (/usr/lib/chromium-browser/xdg-settings) to check
> if it's the default. In the GNOME environment, it will check
> /desktop/gnome/applications/browser, /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http,
> and /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https as well as call "xdg-mime query
> defaults text/html" which checks /usr/share/applications/defaults.list.
> So at least all 3 of those must be set correctly. And for the gconf
> keys, it must be the full path to the executable.
>
> --
> When chromium is the only browser installed, i'm still asked to make it the
> default
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/513133
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Mario Limonciello
<email address hidden>
Sent from Austin, TX, United States

I suspect that Google is trying to cover all its bases (why it checks all the gconf keys *and* the xdg-mime value) so that no matter what goofy launch mechanism is used, chromium will come up. So they would likely accept a patch that checked/set alternatives as well as others if on a Debian system.

As for whether the Debian packaging would disable the other checks... I'm not sure. There is some value setting all those fields, since the world of 'what to launch' is complicated and many apps check different things.

One complication I'm noticing here is that when chromium actually does the check, it calls "which" and "readlink -f" on the command in its desktop file. This causes two bugs: You need to set the full path in the gconf fields, which is not normal or the default, and further, that it finds the 'chromium-browser' in /usr/lib/chromium-browser first (because PATH is prefixed with that dir by the /usr/bin wrapper) and thus the gconf values must actually match /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser.

We should probably patch xdg-settings to at least not call which/readlink.

Or safer, call basename on it for the _gnome() functions, I'm not sure if other environments (kde, xfce4) expect full paths or not. But I know GNOME doesn't.

I suspect regarding the big warning that chromium is not the default, we probably want to disable it, as we disable Firefox's warning (which I recall we do, right?).

And/or disable the part of the options menu that lets user press a big button to make it default. If we leave it there, we probably want the attached patch to make xdg-settings a little more gnome-friendly.

what defaults do we ship for the gconf keys in ubuntu?

e.g. for /desktop/gnome/applications/browser, /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http, and /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https ?

From /usr/share/gconf/defaults/10_libgnome2-common:
/desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec firefox

From /usr/share/gconf/defaults/10_libgnomevfs2-common:
/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command "firefox %s"
/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/command "firefox %s"

From /usr/share/applications/defaults.list:
text/html=firefox.desktop

so yes. to ship chromium by default we need to change those default gconf entries too ... and then check if chromium-browser is happy about that.

So perhaps in all of those gconf keys would it be worthwhile investigating if firefox and chromium get along with setting them to x-www-browser?

That would mean no changes need to be made to allow switching between the two.

I threw my patch over the wall to xdg-utils upstream (which accepted the xdg-settings script from chromium). We'll see what they say about it, and if they like it, we can have chromium include an updated version.

Mario, the upstream version [1] does support looking at x-www-browser if not in GNOME, KDE, or XFCE4. Not quite what you were looking for, but it's a step. I'm not sure what you mean in comment 10. That we could rig GNOME to ignore its gconf keys in favor of x-www-browser? My understanding is that x-www-browser is a deprecated form of looking up the default browser (since each DE has its own way of setting it and exposing it to the user and none of them interact with x-www-browser). I guess that's what you want to fix, eh? :) Probably a different/bigger bug than this though.

[1] http://webcvs.freedesktop.org/portland/portland/xdg-utils/scripts/xdg-settings.in?view=markup

@Michael Terry: what patch did you throw over the wall to xdg-utils? URL?

Xdg-open calls gnome-open and kfmclient to open urls. Gnome-open and kfmclient checks certain GNOME / KDE settings to figure out how to handle urls. Xdg-settings works by checking those same settings.

Please remember the xdg/portland project is about having a standard way of opening files, url, emails, etc on all Linux desktop environments in all Linux distros. AFAIK, x-www-browser is a Debianism that doesn't exist in rpm-land.

Additionally, unlike your per-user GNOME/KDE settings, x-www-browser is a system setting that requires root to change. It seems wrong for Chromium / xdg-settings to change x-www-browser when one user on the system decides to set it as their default browser. What happens to x-www-browser when Alice and Bob have different browser preferences?

As far as Chromium developers are concerned, we want to support the majority of its users, but at the same time not be burdened with having to deal with each individual desktop environment / distro since the Linux desktop landscape is so diverse. Thus we use xdg-utils wherever we can. So sort out how xdg-utils should interact with x-www-browser and go from there.

Lei Zhang, the patch is both attached to this bug [1] and in the upstream bug I linked to this one [2].

I understand that x-www-browser is a Debianism. It was not my decision to include it in xdg-settings. I think the x-www-browser issue is a separate issue from this bug, and one that I doubt will be changed.

As for sorting this issue out with xdg-utils upstream, that's what I'm doing, no? My concern is only that xdg-settings (upstream and chromium both) is improperly using the full path when in GNOME. GNOME does not use full path values in its gconf keys. That is what I'm trying to solve.

[1] http://launchpadlibrarian.net/38457518/gnome_browser_basename.patch
[2] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26300

@Michael Terry: I was mainly trying to address the x-www-browser issue. I missed your patch in this bug report earlier. Yes, I agree sorting this out in xdg-utils is the way to go. I've commented on the bug upstream.

quick update:

with my most recent packaging, chromium detects the default browser using:
/usr/lib/chromium-browser/xdg-settings check default-web-browser chromium-browser.desktop

it still says "no" even if Chromium is default in the Gnome Preferred Web Browser.
If you ask Chromium to make it default, now it works as expected.

The reason xdg-settings fails the 1st is that even if the gconf keys are correct, it makes one more test
(xdg-mime query default text/html) which points to firefox.

xdg-mime searches in defaults.list 1st in ~/.local/share/applications/ then in /usr/share/gnome/applications/

This bug was fixed in the package chromium-browser - 6.0.472.63~r59945-0ubuntu2

---------------
chromium-browser (6.0.472.63~r59945-0ubuntu2) maverick; urgency=low

  * Fix the default browser selection on KDE4 by bringing in a fresher
    xdg-mime (See http://crbug.com/18106) and ship it in the main deb
    - add debian/patches/xdg-utils-update.patch
    - update debian/chromium-browser.install
  * Set CHROME_DESKTOP in the wrapper to help the default browser
    checker (LP: #513133)
    - update debian/chromium-browser.sh.in
 -- Fabien Tassin <email address hidden> Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:40:05 +0200