Re: [PATCHv2 6/7] web--browse: use (x-)www-browser if available

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2010, 22:15 UTC
Message-ID: <7vaakmmrkj.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1291394861-11989-7-git-send-email-giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Debian and derivatives have an alternatives-based default browser
> configuration that uses the /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser,
> /usr/bin/x-www-browser and /usr/bin/www-browser symlinks.
>
> When no browser is selected by the user and the Debian alternatives are
> available, try to see if they are one of our recognized selection and
> in the affermative case use it. Otherwise, warn the user about them
> being unsupported and move on with the previous detection logic.

A "please step back a bit" question. Does the packaging guideline of Debian say that non-browser applications should take these links as "end user preference" when opening HTML pages?

The behaviour of unconfigured git across platforms would become less consistent if we do this, while the behaviour of random programs on one particular platform (Debian) would become more consistent.

I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing. I just want to understand the motivation.

> +# check if a given executable is a browser we like
> +valid_exe() {

Call it valid_browser_executable or something, please.

> +	testexe="$1"
> +	basename=$(basename $(readlink -f "$testexe"))

Are we saying "readlink" must exist on the system? This dependency is new, I think.