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Tasklist

FS#38162 - /usr/bin/open script for /usr/bin/xdg-open in xdg-utils

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Robert Qualls (rlqualls) - Monday, 16 December 2013, 18:46 GMT
Last edited by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Wednesday, 18 December 2013, 09:06 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:

In the past on some Linux distros, /bin/open was symlinked to /bin/openvt. This has fallen into disuse and no longer seems to be the case for Arch Linux. A search through github reveals that open is rarely used to reference openvt.

The user probably expects that "open" does something intuitive like open a file with the default program or open a url in the default web browser. Using xdg-open is a way to accomplish this in a desktop-agnostic manner.

A lot of people are doing this manually:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12329876/is-it-safe-to-alias-open-with-xdg-open
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/264395/linux-equivalent-of-the-mac-os-x-open-command
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdg-utils/+bug/619913

I currently have a script at /usr/bin/open which is
xdg-open $1 &> /dev/null

Making defaults for generic commands like 'open' is dangerous, but in this case I think it's a victory for common sense. The contemporary interpretation of 'open' is pretty narrow and unlikely to change any time soon. Even if xdg-open is replaced with something else, the same behavior should remain.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Jan de Groot (JGC)
Wednesday, 18 December 2013, 09:06 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Monday, 16 December 2013, 23:23 GMT
Feel free to alias it on your system. We won't add it, as upstream is the place where such things should be done. Adding stuff like this means diverting from other distributions with something that is documented nowhere.

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