The command line of launching Edge on Linux hangs

[rayluo]

BPO	44844
Nosy	@terryjreedy, @zooba, @miss-islington, @rayluo
PRs	bpo-44844: Enable detection of Microsoft Edge browser in webbrowser module #29908

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = None
created_at = <Date 2021-08-05.18:58:31.284>
labels = ['easy', 'type-bug', 'library', '3.11']
title = 'The command line of launching Edge on Linux hangs'
updated_at = <Date 2021-12-03.23:10:09.354>
user = 'https://github.com/rayluo'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2021-12-03.23:10:09.354>
actor = 'steve.dower'
assignee = 'none'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2021-08-05.18:58:31.284>
creator = 'rayluo'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 44844
keywords = ['patch', 'easy', 'newcomer friendly']
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['399030', '399037', '407614']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['terry.reedy', 'steve.dower', 'miss-islington', 'rayluo']
pr_nums = ['29908']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = 'patch review'
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue44844'
versions = ['Python 3.11']

[rayluo]

Launching Chrome on Linux from command line:

    $ export BROWSER=google-chrome; python -m webbrowser https://httpbin.org/delay/10

It can successfully launch Chrome with the specified web page opened in a new tab.
And the console command line finishes BEFORE the web page being fully loaded in the browser. That is the desirable behavior.

Launching Edge on Linux from command line:

    $ export BROWSER=microsoft-edge; python -m webbrowser https://httpbin.org/delay/10

The command line hangs until the Edge window is closed.

That hanging symptom can be resolved by writing a deliberate script to webbrowser.register("...", None, webbrowser.BackgroundBrowser("microsoft-edge")) and then use that registered browser. But it was not obvious, and it took trial-and-error to reach that solution.

Could it be possible to have the "BROWSER=microsoft-edge; python -m webbrowser https://httpbin.org/delay/10" work out of the box, without hanging?

Is it because Edge is not currently predefined and handled inside webbrowser.py? It seems not an easy decision to add new browser into webbrowser.py, though, based on the 2nd and 3rd comments in this old issue: https://bugs.python.org/issue42330

[zooba]

Adding a new browser should be pretty easy, and it seems like that's all that is needed here. It has to go into a few places though to support each platform, and unfortunately it's only good for 3.11, and not any of the existing releases.

[zooba]

@ray I posted a PR that works fine on Windows, would you be able to try it on Linux? The executables seem to have different names, so I'm a little concerned about the change, but I think it should be alright.

[DBJim]

@zooba I've tested the changes in your PR on Ubuntu and can confirm it works.