Firefox and Chromium "set as default" not including wrapper

[VShell]

When "set as default browser" is clicked from within Firefox, it places a custom .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications, and points to this from mimeapps.list in the same directory. This file launches Firefox without the wrapper when it's opened using xdg-open. The result is that if xdg-open is used when no Firefox window exists, it will be opened without environment variables set correctly, and without plugins.

[domenkozar]

This is a great example why wrappers are error prone.

[jgeerds]

Is there a easy way to fix this? I don't see one

[edolstra]

The easy way is to use a non-absolute path in the .desktop file, i.e. Exec=firefox. This also ensures that after an upgrade, the new Firefox will be invoked.

[VShell]

@edolstra This .desktop file is generated by Firefox when "set as default browser" is clicked - it's not one of nixpkgs's .desktop files. That'd involve a patch (which would have to be kept up to date with each Firefox release).

[edolstra]

Right, shouldn't be hard to do.

[edolstra]

Testing a patch now...

[vcunat]

@edolstra: I can't see the patch anywhere -- did it work?

[domenkozar]

Chromium .desktop file includes Exec=chromium and suffers from the same problem.

[domenkozar]

This is handled and detected with mimetypes.

xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop text/html
xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/https
xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/about

[domenkozar]

Would be really nice to fix this one, any takers?

[7c6f434c]

I think I have solved it for Firefox; as for Chromium — apparently it is non-trivial to test for me (StumpWM, not a DE)

[benley]

There's still no obvious way to set the default browser that I can find - anyone know what the status is here?

[VShell]

A possibly reasonable option in the case of Firefox would be to disable the default browser check using the mozilla.cfg preferences file, and write a custom dialog for selecting the default browser in the wrapper itself, a very rough basis being:

if check_is_not_default_browser && [ ! -e ~/.config/nix-wrappers/firefox/never-ask ]; then
  yad --title="Default browser" --text="Would you like to set Firefox as your default browser?" --button="gtk-ok:0" --button="gtk-cancel:1" --button="Never:2" --center
  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    xdg-mime default firefox.desktop text/html
    xdg-mime default firefox.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
    xdg-mime default firefox.desktop x-scheme-handler/https
    xdg-mime default firefox.desktop x-scheme-handler/about
  elif [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
    echo 1 > ~/.config/nix-wrappers/firefox/never-ask
  fi
fi

According to a google, similar should work for Chrome/Chromium, except passing --no-first-run --no-default-browser-check instead of messing with config files.

Opinions?

[layus]

Is there no way to trick firefox into thinking its executable name is the wrapper ?

[vcunat]

Yes: 0834dbc but this needs some testing, and it affects many browsers.

[layus]

@vcunat I fixed the wrapper to work with 0834dbc (vcunat#2), but we get another issue.

When we update firefox, we end up with a different /nix path, which firefox considers as a different browser. If you restart firefox (for example when installing addons) then you get the not-your-default-browser" warning.

Investaigating MOZ_APP_LAUNCHER as solution, but I start to think that #4370 (comment) may be the most general solution.