Hi Russ,
This question came up recently on the git mailing list in the context
of git web--browse (a backend used by git instaweb and some other
commands). It would have been nice to have clear advice in Debian
policy to guide what we should do.
From the point of view of improving upstream programs, I think the
best Debian can do is:
1. For desktop apps, recommend unconditional use of xdg-open.
2. For everyone else:
a. Clearly specify the semantics of the BROWSER variable to the
extent that there is wide consensus about it or a strong
rationale (in other words, clearly indicating the murky bits
and leaving them unspecified).
b. Encourage use of x-www-browser and www-browser as defaults
when BROWSER is unset (so upstreams' use of firefox and
lynx can be made configurable at compile time).
c. For non-desktop apps lacking support for the BROWSER variable,
recommend unconditional use of xdg-open (for the same reason).
This should result in a reasonable user experience, as long as:
i. xdg-open and sensible-browser make settings like
BROWSER=firefox:lynx work as intended and take precedence over
any system-wide settings.
ii. xdg-open works well and respects the current desktop's system-wide
and per-user preferred browser configuration.
iii. When xdg-open is installed, some xdg-open workalike registers
itself through the alternatives system as a possible
implementation of the x-www-browser command.
Unfortunately at least gnome-open seems to violate (i). So for policy
there are at least two options: we could specify everything except (i),
and leave whether to implement (i) to the desktop maintainers, or
we could specify (i), too, and create consensus e.g. by proposing a
patch to libgnome.
Both sound like work. :( I guess I'm tempted to specify everything
except (i) and mention (i) as arguably a bug to get past the logjam.
What do you think?
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