[icedtea-web] RFC: allow alternate means of finding browsers

[Omair Majid]

On 12/22/2010 03:42 PM, Dr Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> On 15:32 Wed 22 Dec     , Omair Majid wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The attached patch allows netx to use a browser based on the BROWSER env
>> variable or using xdg-open, as opposed to relying on user-supplied
>> browser command.
>>
>> A new configuration option deployment.browser.source is used to
>> determine where to find the browser. If it is set to "PATH" (the
>> default), the configuration option deployment.browser.path is used. If
>> deployment.browser.source is set to "ENV" then the $BROWSER environment
>> variable is used. If deployment.browser.source is set to "XDG" then the
>> program xdg-open is used to launch the browser.
>>
>
> I would make XDG the default so it works like other applications on the system
> (which I presume use either this or $BROWSER) if deployment.browser.path is not set.
> Then NetX automatically picks up the system browser rather than prompting.
>

Ah, great idea! Should I keep support for using $BROWSER or remove that 
too in favour of xdg-open?

> Shouldn't we do some basic sanity checks on the contents of getEnv? (And path too
> if we don't already)
>

We should, and we dont do it for path either. Actually netx refers to 
path as 'command' and that's how it deals with it too - it simply execs 
"command url" to open the url. This allows a user to use a program name 
(like firefox) instead of the entire path to it. So checking for 
file/path existence makes this common case fail:
BROWSER=chromium-browser javaws foo.jnlp
(and similar for path). I dont see any simple way to check if the 
command is valid - short of actually running the command. Do you have 
any other sanity checks in mind?

Thanks,
Omair