webbrowser.open('http://example.com')

opens something like:

file:///path/to/home/directory/"http://example.com"

in firefox 3 beta 2.  this behavior of firefox will most like not change
in the stable release.

What platform?

How come?

Got a fix that doesn't break for other browsers?

There's a 1-2 week window at most for getting fixes into 2.5.2!

I'm running 2.6.23.9 linux kernel fedora 8.

I've gone ahead and downloaded the subversion checkout of the
webbrowser.py file to see the differences.  The svn version fixes the
issue, so then I went a hunting as to why.

In the 2.5 version, with a version of firefox running out of my home
directory (but still in my path) webbrowser calles BackgroundBrowser
instead of UnixBrowser.

BackgroundBrowser calls subprocess.Popen(cmdline), where cmdline is a
tuble in form ['/browser/path', '"http://example.com"'], and subprocess
doesn't use/like the double quotes (probably legacy os.popen format)

The difference in the two webbrowser scripts that fixes it is thus:

446a445,455
>     # The default Gnome browser
>     if _iscommand("gconftool-2"):
>         # get the web browser string from gconftool
>         gc = 'gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command
2>/dev/n
ull'
>         out = os.popen(gc)
>         commd = out.read().strip()
>         retncode = out.close()
> 
>         # if successful, register it
>         if retncode is None and commd:
>             register("gnome", None, BackgroundBrowser(commd.split()))
448,456c457
<     # The default GNOME browser
<     if "GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID" in os.environ and
_iscommand("gnome-open"):
<         register("gnome-open", None, BackgroundBrowser("gnome-open"))
< 
<     # The default KDE browser
<     if "KDE_FULL_SESSION" in os.environ and _iscommand("kfmclient"):
<         register("kfmclient", Konqueror, Konqueror("kfmclient"))
< 
<     # The Mozilla/Netscape browsers

so it appears to be a problem with gconf that python has to work around.

see:  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python2.5/+bug/83974


So as long as it is in trunk 2.5.2 should fix it! (the patch is not in
2.5.1).  thanks.

OK, since it's so simple I'll take it if noone else does. But anyone
else who feels like backporting this please go ahead!

Adding patch with backport from trunk to branches/release25-maint.
Tested with firefox(2 and 3a3), epiphany and elinks on GNOME 2.20,
altough I coulnd't reproduce the error before from python, even changing
the gconf setting manually.

Sorry, I have lots of other things to do before I get to this.  It's too
late for 2.5.2; 2.5.3 won't be out until September or October 2008. 
Please ping before then.

Out-of-date: fixed in trunk.

Thanks, closing.