Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.9.2.0
Severity: normal
Section 11.8.3 "Packages providing a terminal emulator" contains:
To be an x-terminal-emulator, a program must:
*
[...]
*
Support the command-line option -e command, which creates a new
terminal window[94
<http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/footnotes.html#f94>]
and runs the specified command, interpreting the entirety of the
rest of the command line as a command to pass straight to exec,
in the manner that xterm does.
However, as pointed out by Hendrik Sattler in #563352, xterm does *not*
simply pass its -e option straight to exec, at least nowadays. The
following command exemplifies:
$ xterm -e 'echo TEST && sleep 3'
This works as intended, so xterm does not just support simple commands,
but also pipelines. The source shows:
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-xorg/app/xterm.git;a=blob;f=main.c;h=48143b7219a645f71124d22e2980f141d6a502f5;hb=c18d61b3feac0c5c63e5f022e8b4d1c2056947d7#l4557
xterm does call exec, but sometimes to span a subshell which will
interpret the command.
By the way, as Hendrik wrote, it would be best to specify how
x-terminal-emulator should behave, rather than to say the behavior
should be the same as xterm's.
Also, the term "command" is ambiguous.
