[GTALUG] 'file' maintainer? (or fun with PIE and magic)

Stewart C. Russell scruss at gmail.com
Thu Feb 8 16:34:24 EST 2018


On 2018-02-08 02:47 PM, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:
> 
> Yeah, I tend to agree with the maintainer here, although I find the term
> "shared object" a bit overloaded.

Good news is that he *has* decided to make the change, since so many
packages depend on what file/magic does.

> So I guess there may be a different interpretation of what "executing a
> file using a file manager" means.

I'm not sure Nautilus is a shining example. First off, they seem
hell-bent on removing useful features: current releases make it
deliberately difficult to use more than one tool to open files, and the
next release will have *no* desktop integration. No icons on the desktop
for us pesky users who have expected it for the last ~30 years!

Secondly, the attitude of "just make a desktop file" is utterly
infuriating. I can probably successfully make these 1 out of 3, and
unless it's your job to do it, it's really not obvious how it's done.

(The 1 out of the 3 I can get working is because I have a working
application launcher desktop file, and I just sed out the executable name …)

I was really hopeful that 2018 would be the year of Linux on the
desktop, too.

> There's also a very interesting comment later on (comment #10), saying
> that Nautilus doesn't rely on "file", but rather on other libraries
> which provide the "MIME guessing" for it.

oh great — another point of failure! So if even the original file/magic
system is updated, Gnome's will lag behind.

 Stewart



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