Bug#1112077: /usr/bin/mimeopen: Change in mimeopen breaks other applications, as it uses now run instead of exec

[gregor herrmann]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2025 03:01:56 +0300, Jean Louis wrote:

>I am encountering a behavior change in the `mimeopen` script due to a
>recent update — specifically from version 0.32 to 0.35, as shown in
>the diff.

[…]

>Personally, I find such undocumented and unanticipated changes in
>system utilities like `mimeopen` deeply detrimental to users

It's documented in the upstream Changes file (installed as 
/usr/share/doc/libfile-mimeinfo-perl/changelog.gz):

0.35  2024-04-25
  - Fix exit code issue for `mimeopen`
     Closes https://github.com/mbeijen/File-MimeInfo/issues/54
     fix provided by slatian

0.34  2023-12-03
  - Let `mimeopen` use File::DesktopEntrys run() instead of exec() to
    make sure the application is started in the background.
    Closes https://github.com/mbeijen/File-MimeInfo/issues/53


Both Github issues contain further pointers to why those changes 
happened.


I guess there are two sides to this issue about exec/run, and I don't 
know which one is "correcter" than the other. My suggestion is to 
discuss this upstream; maybe there's a possibility to find a solution 
that allows for both ways but that's not something we're going to do 
unilaterally in Debian, I guess.


Cheers,
gregor

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