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Draft: d/patches: Backport changes from 2.75.0 improving choice of terminal

Simon McVittie requested to merge wip/backport-terminal-choice into debian/latest

This is an alternative to !21 (closed), and is the approach to terminal emulators that I'd prefer. Not tested yet and might need some implementation tweaks; but what do people think?

I am unsure whether this is appropriate for Debian 12, or whether we should be deferring this to Debian 13 (in which case we can upgrade to GLib 2.76 instead of backporting these changes from 2.75.0). For now I've written it as though we're going to apply it in Debian 12.

/cc @biebl @tachi @jbicha @pwithnall-guest

  • d/patches: Backport changes from 2.75.0 improving choice of terminal

    Specifically, this affects the choice of terminal for .desktop files with Terminal=true, such as /usr/share/applications/mutt.desktop.

    • Make the list of possible terminals declarative, making it easier to modify with minimal diffstat
    • Add xdg-terminal-exec (see #1029907) as a high-priority choice, providing a way for users to override GLib's choice of terminal if desired
    • Use the upstream version of the patch adding gnome-console (kgx) as a possible terminal
    • Add test coverage

    This results in a minor behaviour change: if both gnome-console and gnome-terminal are installed, Terminal=true apps will now launch in gnome-console. Debian's GNOME metapackages do not install gnome-console by default (although the Phosh metapackages do) so this will not affect desktop GNOME users unless they have intentionally installed gnome-console.

  • Add patch to try x-terminal-emulator for Terminal=true apps

    This is intentionally only used if none of the known GTK-based terminal emulators are available, for the reasons described in the patch metadata.

    Closes: #773915 (to the extent that we are likely to)

  • README.Debian: Add notes on how to choose how Terminal=true apps launch

  • Update changelog

Edited by Simon McVittie

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