Bug#658139: Breaking programs because a not yet implemented solution exists in theory (Was: Bug#658139: evince: missing mime entry)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi,

this problem concerns missing *.mime file which breaks other programs
like for instance see

$ see test.pdf 
Error: no "view" mailcap rules found for type "application/pdf"


On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 07:57:39PM +0100, Michael Biebl wrote:
> severity 658139 wishlist
> tags 658139 + wontfix

:-(
This is definitely not "wishlist" - but I do not like to play
severity-changing pingpong.

> On 31.01.2012 17:18, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > Package: evince
> > Severity: important
> > Tags: patch
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > several programs (for instance see, mc) are regarding mime entries
> > in mailcap file and can not find a PDF viewer in case only evince is
> > installed.  This ends up in something like:
> 
> Since Joss has removed this file on purpose, it's very unlikely that it
> is coming back.
> 
> This topic has been discussed several times already. Instead of
> maintaining these files by hand (remember, we do have quite a few in the
> GNOME repo), those mailcap entries should be generated automatically
> from the *.desktop files that are provided upstream and already contain
> all the necessary information.
> We don't want to maintain a second mime database by hand in parallel.

So the existence of a potential but not implemented solution rectifies
to break other packages?  That's  ...  uhmm, my vocabulary is broken. :-(
 
> From our pov, someone interested in this topic should write a small
> tool, which does this automatically and is dpkg triggered.

I agree that an automatic solution would be prefered.  However, as long
as such someone does not stand up and write such a program removing
existing solutions is <feel free to insert any word which fits>.  I
rarely have read this kind of argument on a Debian mailing list.

Kind regards

        Andreas.

-- 
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