[pkg-crosswire-devel] Bug#969775: xiphos: please call "gio open $URL" instead of "gvfs-open $URL" or "gnome-open $URL"

[Simon McVittie]

Source: xiphos
Version: 4.2.1+dfsg1-2
Severity: important
User: pkg-gnome-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
Usertags: gvfs-bin-deprecation

xiphos tries to open files via "gvfs-open $path" and "gnome-open $path".
Both are obsolete; the replacement is "gio open $path", using the gio(1)
tool from the libglib2.0-bin package. (Please note that gio has a
subcommand structure, like git but unlike gvfs-open: argv[1] needs to be
"open", and argv[2] is the path to be opened.)

It also doesn't have a dependency, even a weak dependency like Suggests,
on the packages containing gvfs-open, gnome-open or display.

The gvfs-open tool was superseded by gio(1) in 2015, and removed from
upstream GNOME in 2018. The version in Debian is currently a
Debian-specific patch, which we would like to remove before Debian 11.

The gnome-open tool was superseded by gvfs-open in 2008, ceased to be
part of GNOME releases after about 2011, most recently appeared in a
Debian stable release as part of Debian 9, and was finally removed from
Debian in 2019.

Please use "gio open $URL", with an appropriate level of dependency
(perhaps Suggests?) on libglib2.0-bin. If support for pre-2015
distributions is required, it would be OK to fall back to gvfs-open if
gio(1) is not found. Calling gnome-open is probably a bad idea even if
it is somehow still installed.

To be nice to non-GNOME desktops, it might also be a good idea to try
xdg-open(1), either before or after "gio open".

Thanks,
    smcv