xdg-email fails when thunderbird replaces evolution

[gpk]

Binary package hint: xdg-utils

xdg-email is required by some features of bazaar (bzr). However, xdg-email
seems to be tied tightly to evolution: if I create an e-mail account with thunderbird, it does not use it. (It tries to make me set up evolution.) If I remove evolution, it then simply fails with a warning message
$ xdg-email
Error showing url: Failed to execute child process "evolution" (No such file or directory)
$

Ideally, this would use /etc/alternatives or some technique to adapt to whatever e-mail client is installed and configured. This failure is *especially* odd because the xdg-utils package neither recommends nor even suggests evolution.

Also, it's description says "Open the user's preferred email client..." and, well, my preferred client is thunderbird. At a minimum, you should change the description to say "Opens Ubuntu's recommended email client..."

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10
gpk@nglap:~$

$ apt-cache policy xdg-utils
xdg-utils:
  Installed: 1.0.2-6.1
  Candidate: 1.0.2-6.1
  Version table:
 *** 1.0.2-6.1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
gpk@nglap:~$

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.