[Aptitude-devel] Bug#462063: Bug#462063: aptitude: please add a "See homepage" action for packages

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> > with the new field for a packages homepage, it would be nice to have a menu
> > entry and hotkey to open a "sensible-browser" with the Homepage URL of the
> > current package (with no action, if there is no Homepage specified).
> 
> I am marking this bug as +wontfix, mainly because it's been for 7+ years
> without being implemented, so I don't see it happening any time soon.
> 
> Also, because implementing this kind of features with a package that
> often runs as root and sometimes remotely is tricky because:
[...]
>  - running the browser as root is even more problematic

This is IMHO the main point, although that may be less of an issue if
aptitude runs as user.

This is very similar to aptitude's "B" keybinding which runs reportbug
on the selected package. That feature exists, but it has been
requested to be removed (!) for multiple reasons.

If used as root, reportbug clearly warns that running it as root may
be a security issue.

> So I don't really think that it's a good idea to implement this, because
> it's like opening a can of worms; and even if it was it means a
> considerable amount of work, and I think that at the moment the scarce
> time would be better spent in other more pressing problems.

I think both those features (opening home page in a browser as well as
reporting a bug on a package), both should be accessible if aptitude
does not run as root, if at all.

I'm not sure how many aptitude users use the Aptitude TUI as non-root
at all. While it is probably a good idea security-wise, I use aptitude
as user basically only with querying options (search, show, version,
etc.) on the commandline.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
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