checkbox-unity: submission.xml opens in chromium instead of default browser

[Alistair Buxton]

At the end of testing, checkbox-unity offers the user the chance to review the submission.xml with a link. When clicked, this link opens in chromium if it is installed, and not the user's default browser.

Unfortunately chromium does not have the ability to display XML files and so this results in a blank/empty window.

To reproduce:

1. Run checkbox-unity and do all the tests.
2. Click "View report"

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Shouldn't this be a bug with Checkbox? It should ideally use xdg-open for this task (I guess it does already).

If that's the case then this might be an issue with xdg utils instead.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Or, most probably it's a user configuration issue.

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Hi,

I guess you looked at Checkbox's source code, which indeed tries to honor the user's preference.

Regardless, I'm confirming since I've also experienced this, and setting to High, as the inability to look at the testing report is a pretty big deal.

I'll look at this ASAP.

Thanks!

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

OK, so I had a look and here's what I found.

On a default Unity desktop, Checkbox runs this to get the preferred browser :

gconftool --get /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command

On my system, this returns "sensible-browser". This is in /usr/bin. Now, sensible-browser is a shell script which in turn appears to call /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser, which symlinks to /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser, which in turn symlinks to /usr/bin/chromium-browser (on a system with chromium installed, of course).

It appears we have two problems here. I never asked Chromium to be the default browser, so it's clobbering /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser, which in my opinion it shouldn't do. So maybe this bug should have a Chromium task, if it can be verified that it does this.

Second, and more relevant to checkbox, I think it was using xdg-open but it stopped working at some point. I'll try to research how to get gnome3's browser preferences in a way that works for both Oneiric and Precise.

I'll set to Triaged as we know what we have to do.

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

When this happened to me, Chromium absolutely wasn't the default browser before or after, and it even offered to make itself the default when it loaded up.

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Alistair,

It seems there are two places where the "default browser" is set. It appears also that chromium automatically sets itself as /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser when installed.

So one workaround to make sure that your preference is honored everywhere is, in addition to configuring your browser in System Info -> Default Apps, do this in a terminal:

sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-www-browser

and select the browser you actually want from the shown list.

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Linked a branch with a fix for checkbox.

Still, a bug would need to be filed for Chromium which just assumes the user wants it as the default and configures itself in /etc/alternatives. Two places where default browser is configured and only one that's GUI-configurable will eventually lead only to confusion, sorrow and death.