[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#434863: Bug#434863: xfce4-terminal: Wrapper script seems broken

[Andrea Bolognani]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:07:37 +0100
Simon Huggins <huggie at earth.li> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 07:32:19PM +0200, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> > Ok, I found the problem; while it is not a bug per se, it breaks other
> > programs, since it doesn't follow the expected behavior.
>
> > xfce4-terminal forks to a new window at startup: this causes the
> > calling program -- in my case Sylpheed, but I'm sure this is true for
> > other mail clients as well -- to think the editing session is
> > finished, and to continue its tasks.
>
> Eh?  This doesn't make any sense.  It doesn't fork at all.
>
> > So it should at least provide a command line switch (like gvim's -f
> > option) to avoid forking, and this switch should be active by default
> > in the wrapper script, since that script it's AFAIK supposed to
> > provide an xterm-compatible interface, and xterm doesn't fork at
> > startup.
>
> Can you explain what you mean?  forking at startup doesn't make sense to
> me since xfce4-terminal doesn't do that.
>
> I still think this is a bug in sylpheed.

Sorry, I don't know xfce4-terminal's code, so maybe my explanation will
be inaccurate, or maybe totally wrong.

What I can see, as a user, is that, if I run xterm (or rxvt, or
gnome-terminal, they behave the same) from a terminal window, the shell
is blocked because the new terminal process is in the foreground, and the
shell waits for it to complete before giving me back the prompt.

If I do the same with xfce4-terminal, I immediately get the prompt back: this
is because (my guess of course) xfce4-terminal forks on startup, or does a
similar trick to run in the background; this causes the shell (or Sylpheed)
to think the process terminated, and returns to do its stuff.

GVim behaves the same way: if you launch it from a terminal, it forks to the
background and you immediately get the prompt back; if you need it to stay on
foreground until it really finishes, like for example when you use it as
external editor in a mail client, you can use the -f (or --nofork) switch to
prevent it from forking in the background.

I'm pretty sure this is the problem.
As I said, this is *not* really a bug, just a feature you should be able to
turn off, since it breaks Sylpheed and potentially other mail clients and
programs which wait for xfce4-terminal to exit.

It is also different from the expected behavior, since xterm, rxvt and
gnome-terminal all stay in the foreground, and xterm is AFAICT the reference
implementation for terminals.

--
KiyuKo <eof AT kiyuko DOT org>
Resistance is futile, you will be garbage collected.
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