On Tue, 27 Jun 2023 at 14:11:35 +0200, Christophe Lohr wrote: > The code of this wrapper make several rearrangements to convert '-e' and > '-x' > options into the '--' syntax, but it seems to not support itself the '--' > syntax on its command line. Isn't it? > Is this an oversight or I am wrong? > May I suggest adding support for "--"?
Please could you clarify why it would be useful for gnome-terminal.wrapper to support the "--" syntax? The only purpose of gnome-terminal.wrapper is to implement Debian's x-terminal-emulator interface as defined in <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-customized-programs.html#packages-providing-a-terminal-emulator>, which is a subset of xterm's command-line interface and therefore uses "-e" to prefix a command to run. xterm does not support the GNU-style "--" and there is no guarantee that an implementation of x-terminal-emulator will support it either, so accepting it in gnome-terminal.wrapper would just make it a bit more likely for people to write calls like "x-terminal-emulator -- less /etc/hosts" which will actually only work for a few specific terminal emulators. If you're writing code that runs gnome-terminal (specifically) as a subprocess, please use the gnome-terminal command and its preferred "--" syntax. There is no need to use the wrapper in this case, and in fact it would be counterproductive to do so: all it does is to slow down startup a little bit, and make some features unavailable. If you're writing code that runs the generic x-terminal-emulator command as a subprocess, then you will have to use the "-e" syntax, otherwise it won't work correctly with xterm (and probably many other terminal emulators). If you're writing code that supports multiple specific commands as ways to run a command in a terminal, then it needs to "just know" whether each one expects "-e", "-x", "--", or no argument at all. The table of known terminals in <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/blob/2.76.3/gio/gdesktopappinfo.c#L2698> is an example of this technique. Everyone involved recognises that this is not a pleasant interface, but that's the price we pay for portability. smcv
