xdg-open does not spawn terminal for Terminal=true

Submitted by Thomas Gläßle

Assigned to Portland Bugs

Link to original bug (#92514)

Description

Created attachment 118945 Ad hoc patch to launch terminal

xdg-open does not spawn terminals for desktop files with Terminal=true.

For example consider the following configuration:

~/.local/share/applications/ranger.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=ranger
Type=Application
Terminal=true
Exec=ranger %F

~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list:

[Default Applications]
inode/directory=ranger.desktop
inode/mount-point=ranger.desktop

Then I expect ranger to be opened in a terminal upon running:

xdg-open /

What currently happens is:

(a) if running the command from a non-terminal context, xdg-open tries to execute ranger without terminal. This errors and xdg-open falls back to execute mimeopen which ignores mimeapps.list and only looks at defaults.list and therefore confusingly may use another default.

(b) if running the command within a terminal, ranger is opened in the current terminal. While this is fine, I think it would be fine as well to spawn a new terminal.

This applies to xdg-utils 1.1.1.

The attached patch spawns a new terminal asynchronously indiscriminately of case (a) versus case (b). It uses the TERMINAL environment variable, similar to what mimeopen does.

Attachment 118945, "Ad hoc patch to launch terminal":
spawn_terminal.diff

Version: 1.1.0