Bug#993137: Always opens files in separate application instances when it shouldn't

[shilin.aleksej at gmail.com]

Package: nautilus
Version: 3.38.2-1
Tags: patch
Severity: important
Justification: breaks common usage patterns and standards compliance

Dear maintainers,

I've found that Nautilus always opens each selected file in a separate
application instance even though the latter's desktop file Exec record
contains %F or %U. This leads to the following issues.

   1. This behavior breaks a common usage pattern when user selects
   multiple files and wants to open them in a single application.
   
   For example:
   
      * User wants to watch selected video files.
      
      With Nautilus 3.38, only one of them ends up in the play queue of
      GNOME's default video player (Totem) because opening each application
      instance overwrites the queue.
      
      It is even worse when using a player which allows simultanious
      instances leading to multiple videos playing at once.
      
      Same with audio files.
      
      * User wants to view selected images.
      
      With current behavior, each image opens in a separate Eye of GNOME
      window instead of opening the first one in a single window and cycling
      through the other ones.
      
   2. Current behavior doesn't meet the Freedesktop.org desktop files
   standard[1].
   
   3. As explained in the upstream bug report[2], this annoying behavior
   was introduced for development testing purposes only:
   
      "This was introduced to ensure compatibility with Flatpak. At the time
      there was no API to allow grouping files by their type or somesuch and
      opening them all at once."
      
      "It has nothing to do with how many users use "flatpaks". It's about
      using nautilus in a Flatpak. Which only developers do as nautilus is
      not meant to be used as a sandboxed application, but as a system
      application."

   So this change was introduced for development testing purposes only,
   and Nautilus is not and never meant to be used sandboxed by end user.
   At the same time, this change breaks common usage patterns for people
   who are not Nautilus developers i.e. an overwhelming majority of users.
   
   4. This problematic change was reverted in a subsequent MR[3] which
   unfortunately didn't make it into version 3.38.
   
Given all above, could you consider backporting the fix into Nautilus
in Debian 11 (stable), please? The patch in question, available for
download from the aforementioned MR, applies cleanly to the version in
stable and works flawlessly, providing both the correct behavior for
end users *and* Flatpak support.

The patch is also attached to this message for your convenience.

   [1]
   https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s07.html
   
   [2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/117
   
   [3] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/merge_requests/518

--
Regards,
Алексей Шилин
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