Shouldn't create /usr/local/bin/firefox and thunderbird

[Egmont Koblinger]

ubuntu-mate-default-settings creates two executables, firefox and thunderbird under /usr/local/bin.

First, /usr/local is the place where distributions shouldn't place any files (apart from some standard subdirectories). This is a place for local additions.

Second, whereas the most basic functionality of a package manager is to ship and track files, this package doesn't ship these as normal files but creates them from postinst (and removes from postrm). As such, commands like "dpkg -S /usr/local/bin/firefox" fail to locate which package these files belong to, leaving local sysadmins quite clueless who and why created them.

If I may have a guess, I guess there's some linting tool that rejects package that ship files into /usr/local, and hence this utterly unacceptable workaround. It decides to deliberately break a rule, and in order to be able to do so, it has to and does deliberately break another fundamental rule as well.

In combination with bug #1605887, I think this entire Mate integration should be re-thought from scratch.

E.g. if my firefox startup executes this Mate-specific wrapper even if my desktop environment is not Mate, what's wrong with including these bits directly in /usr/bin/firefox? Or at least include a piece of code there that sources all files under a certain directory, and let Mate ship its extension there?

Let alone the shell scripts are written poorly in at least two ways:
- $@ aren't double-quoted in the script, breaking command line arguments that contain spaces;
- there's no "exec" and bash isn't clever enough to optimize it, leaving an extra "bash /usr/local/bin/firefox" running for the entire firefox session.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: ubuntu-mate-default-settings 17.10.24
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-11.12-generic 4.13.1
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity:Unity7:ubuntu
Date: Sun Sep 24 00:49:11 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-11-09 (317 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" - Release amd64 (20161012.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-mate-settings
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-09-21 (2 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[kolya (mar-kolya)]

I would like to expand on one of the comment mentioned by this bug's author:

"there's no "exec" and bash isn't clever enough to optimize it, leaving an extra "bash /usr/local/bin/firefox" running for the entire firefox session."

Not only it leaves extra bash running it also breaks any scripts that start and kill firefox - because now they issue signal to bash, bash dies, firefox continues to run.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-mate-settings - 18.04.1

---------------
ubuntu-mate-settings (18.04.1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * Add window buttons applet to Mutiny layout.
  * Conform to glib-compile-schema naming convention for overrides. (LP: #1577715)
  * Correct Super+L keybinding to lock the screen. (LP: #1728880)
  * Drop AppMenu integration for Firefox and Thunderbird. (LP: #1719134)
  * Use defaultPref() for Firefox defaults. (LP: #1721965) However, the
    defaultPref() functionality is broken due to this upstream bug report:
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=947838

 -- Martin Wimpress <email address hidden> Wed, 15 Nov 2017 23:05:55 +0000

[Christopher A. Chavez (chrstphrchvz)]

I encountered this bug while trying to open a local HTML file, and because of $@ rather than "$@" being used in the wrapper, any spaces in the filename or path causes multiple tabs to be opened (each with incomplete portions of the path).

Would it be possible to provide this fix for 17.10?