AptURLs don't directly open apturl in Xubuntu

[Ryan Oram]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Jim Campbell <jwcampbell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 5:37 AM, Ryan Oram <ryanoram at trentu.ca> wrote:
>>
>> When I run "exo-open apt://foo" on Xubuntu, by default it opens the
>> default browser instead of AptURL. This is great if Firefox is your
>> default browser, as it will then open AptURL on its own. But if your
>> default browser is Chromium, which uses xdg-open to determine the
>> default application for URIs, an AptURL will just open another
>> instance of Chromium and no package will be installed.
>>
>> I'm looking into making a website for the "Ubuntu AppUpdate" service
>> and was disappointed to see that Xubuntu doesn't fully support
>> AptURLs, at least not to the same extent as Ubuntu.
>>
>> I looked into trying set exo-open manually and it looks like a fiery
>> undocumented hell, so I was wondering if you guys would know how to
>> fix this.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Ryan
>>
>
> Just checking . . . did you also test this on Chromium on Ubuntu?  Might it
> be a Chromium / Firefox issue, rather than a Xubuntu / Ubuntu issue?
>
> Jim

It works fine in Ubuntu/Gnome, as Gnome uses gnome-open to provide
xdg-open. gnome-open is setup out of the box via gconf to use apturl
for the apt:// URI. You can actually test this out on Xubuntu by
running "gnome-open apt://foo". It should bring up a message telling
you that there is no "foo" package. Doing the same with exo-open, the
Xfce mechanism for xdg-open, just brings up your default browser,
which is useless if it is Chromium.

To summarize, running "xdg-open apt://foo" on Gnome/Ubuntu brings up
the apturl application. Running "xdg-open apt://foo" on Xfce/Xubuntu
just brings up the default browser, which is incorrect behavior.

Thanks,
Ryan