[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#763726: thunar: trouble with file associations since glib2.0 upgrade to 2.42

[Pier Luigi Pau]

Package: thunar
Version: 1.6.3-1
Severity: normal

Opening files in Thunar (under XFCE) shows inconsistent behaviour with
respect to file associations. This happens since an upgrade of
libglib2.0-0 to version 2.42.0-1 from 2.40.0-5, and is apparently
related to the changes in GLib 2.41.x concerning the move of mimeapps
configuration to ~/.config/mimeapps.list (as documented in
/usr/share/doc/libglib2.0-0/changelog.gz, commit
6fd5a8cdaa0dee2217ebe7411adf3ddb37f1827e).

More specifically, it seems like the [Default Applications] section is
shown and updated when file associations are set from Thunar, but the
first application in [Added Associations] is actually opened by Thunar
upon opening a file.

Manually opening ~/.config/mimeapps.list in a text editor and editing
the application order in the [Added Associations] section does the
trick.

Example: let an excerpt from ~/.config/mimeapps.list be

[Default Applications]
application/pdf=evince.desktop

[Added Associations]
application/pdf=evince.desktop;pdf.desktop;gv.desktop;display-im6.desktop;xpdf.desktop;

Thunar opens PDF files with evince. If the association is changed
within Thunar to xpdf, the file is modified to something along the
lines of:

[Default Applications]
application/pdf=xpdf.desktop

[Added Associations]
application/pdf=evince.desktop;pdf.desktop;gv.desktop;display-im6.desktop;xpdf.desktop;

but Thunar still opens PDF files with evince, because it is the first
application in the [Added Associations] section. However, the file
association shown within Thunar is xpdf.

On the same setup (and still running XFCE), Nautilus apparently works
fine, whereas PCManFM also shows odd behaviour. I interpret that
Thunar and PCManFM may both need some patching to work consistently
with the changes in glib2.0, but please let me know if this is a
glib2.0 bug, and feel free to reassign. Otherwise, I shall further
investigate the behaviour of PCManFM and file a bug against PCManFM as
well, as time allows.

Best regards,
Pier Luigi Pau


-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.16-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=it_IT.utf8, LC_CTYPE=it_IT.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages thunar depends on:
ii  desktop-file-utils  0.22-1
ii  exo-utils           0.10.2-4
ii  libatk1.0-0         2.12.0-1
ii  libc6               2.19-11
ii  libcairo2           1.12.16-5
ii  libdbus-1-3         1.8.6-2
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2    0.102-1
ii  libexo-1-0          0.10.2-4
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0  2.30.8-1
ii  libglib2.0-0        2.42.0-1
ii  libgtk2.0-0         2.24.24-1
ii  libgudev-1.0-0      208-8
ii  libice6             2:1.0.9-1
ii  libnotify4          0.7.6-2
ii  libpango1.0-0       1.36.7-1
ii  libsm6              2:1.2.2-1
ii  libthunarx-2-0      1.6.3-1
ii  libxfce4ui-1-0      4.10.0-6
ii  libxfce4util6       4.10.1-2
ii  libxfconf-0-2       4.10.0-3
ii  shared-mime-info    1.3-1
ii  thunar-data         1.6.3-1

Versions of packages thunar recommends:
ii  dbus-x11        1.8.6-2
ii  gvfs            1.20.3-1
ii  libfontconfig1  2.11.0-6.1
ii  libfreetype6    2.5.2-2
ii  thunar-volman   0.8.0-4
ii  tumbler         0.1.30-1
ii  xdg-user-dirs   0.15-2
ii  xfce4-panel     4.10.1-1

Versions of packages thunar suggests:
ii  thunar-archive-plugin     0.3.1-3
ii  thunar-media-tags-plugin  0.2.1-1

-- no debconf information