Public bug reported:
ubuntu-mate-default-settings creates two executables, firefox and
thunderbird under /usr/local/bin.
First, /usr/local is the place where distributions shouldn't place any
files (apart from some standard subdirectories). This is a place for
local additions.
Second, whereas the most basic functionality of a package manager is to
ship and track files, this package doesn't ship these as normal files
but creates them from postinst (and removes from postrm). As such,
commands like "dpkg -S /usr/local/bin/firefox" fail to locate which
package these files belong to, leaving local sysadmins quite clueless
who and why created them.
If I may have a guess, I guess there's some linting tool that rejects
package that ship files into /usr/local, and hence this utterly
unacceptable workaround. It decides to deliberately break a rule, and in
order to be able to do so, it has to and does deliberately break another
fundamental rule as well.
In combination with bug #1605887, I think this entire Mate integration
should be re-thought from scratch.
E.g. if my firefox startup executes this Mate-specific wrapper even if
my desktop environment is not Mate, what's wrong with including these
bits directly in /usr/bin/firefox? Or at least include a piece of code
there that sources all files under a certain directory, and let Mate
ship its extension there?
Let alone the shell scripts are written poorly in at least two ways:
- $@ aren't double-quoted in the script, breaking command line arguments that
contain spaces;
- there's no "exec" and bash isn't clever enough to optimize it, leaving an
extra "bash /usr/local/bin/firefox" running for the entire firefox session.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: ubuntu-mate-default-settings 17.10.24
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-11.12-generic 4.13.1
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity:Unity7:ubuntu
Date: Sun Sep 24 00:49:11 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-11-09 (317 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" - Release amd64 (20161012.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-mate-settings
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-09-21 (2 days ago)
** Affects: ubuntu-mate-settings (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Tags: amd64 apport-bug artful
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1719134
Title:
Shouldn't create /usr/local/bin/firefox and thunderbird
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