[Pkg-chromium-maint] Bug#612876: chromium-browser: Forcibly takes over http and https handling, ignoring settings for default browser

[Josh Triplett]

Package: chromium-browser
Version: 9.0.597.84~r72991-1
Severity: important

(Seriously considered reporting this as "critical", since it breaks
the configured setup with GNOME and iceweasel, but this may represent an
ongoing transition.)

Upgrading chromium-browser caused it to forcibly take over handling of
http and https, in spite of the many different places I've set iceweasel
as the default browser (via $BROWSER and via GNOME's "Preferred
Applications").  This change seems like the likely culprit:

  * Add x-scheme-handler/http and x-scheme-handler/https to the MimeType
    entry of the desktop file

Short of reading the chromium-browser changelog, I don't see any obvious
way for a user to track down the reason for this behavior; it just makes
it look like GNOME started ignoring the settings for the default
browser.  (And since I upgraded iceweasel around the same time, I
also looked there to see if it had changed something relevant that
caused it to no longer provide a browser for GNOME.)

In any case, this mechanism seems to take priority over the several
existing ways of specifying a default browser, without respecting the
existing preferences, and without any way to set the *new* preference.
And in any case, even if a new mechanism did exist to set the new
preference, that would still have the effect of overriding the user's
existing setting and forcing them to set it over again.

- Josh Triplett

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.37-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages chromium-browser depends on:
ii  chromium-browser-ins 9.0.597.84~r72991-1 page inspector for the chromium-br
ii  libasound2           1.0.23-2.1          shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libbz2-1.0           1.0.5-6             high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  libc6                2.11.2-11           Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcairo2            1.10.2-2            The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libcups2             1.4.5-3             Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-3          1.4.1-2             simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2     0.88-2.1            simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libevent-1.4-2       1.4.13-stable-1     An asynchronous event notification
ii  libexpat1            2.0.1-7             XML parsing C library - runtime li
ii  libfontconfig1       2.8.0-2.1           generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6         2.4.2-2.1           FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libgcc1              1:4.4.5-10          GCC support library
ii  libgconf2-4          2.28.1-6            GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libgcrypt11          1.4.5-2             LGPL Crypto library - runtime libr
ii  libglib2.0-0         2.28.0-1            The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgtk2.0-0          2.20.1-2            The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libicu44             4.4.2-2             International Components for Unico
ii  libjpeg62            6b1-1               The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG 
ii  libnspr4-0d          4.8.6-1             NetScape Portable Runtime Library
ii  libnss3-1d           3.12.9~beta2-1      Network Security Service libraries
ii  libpango1.0-0        1.28.3-1+squeeze1   Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpng12-0           1.2.44-1            PNG library - runtime
ii  libspeex1            1.2~rc1-1           The Speex codec runtime library
ii  libstdc++6           4.4.5-10            The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libv8-2.5.9.9        2.5.9.9-2           V8 JavaScript Engine
ii  libvpx0              0.9.5-2             VP8 video codec (shared library)
ii  libx11-6             2:1.4.1-4           X11 client-side library
ii  libxdamage1          1:1.1.3-1           X11 damaged region extension libra
ii  libxext6             2:1.2.0-2           X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxml2              2.7.8.dfsg-2        GNOME XML library
ii  libxrender1          1:0.9.6-1           X Rendering Extension client libra
ii  libxslt1.1           1.1.26-6            XSLT 1.0 processing library - runt
ii  libxss1              1:1.2.1-1           X11 Screen Saver extension library
ii  libxtst6             2:1.2.0-1           X11 Testing -- Record extension li
ii  xdg-utils            1.1.0~rc1-1         desktop integration utilities from
ii  zlib1g               1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3    compression library - runtime

chromium-browser recommends no packages.

Versions of packages chromium-browser suggests:
pn  chromium-browser-l10n         <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information