clicompanion-devs team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> I suspect we need (a) a quick fix ASAP, so Marek's 1.1 package for

>>> Debian has a working set of commands, and (b) possibly a more
>>> complex longer term approach. I think gksu is good enough for (a).


On 11/19/2011 09:48 PM, Jonathan Marsden wrote:

> I think a quick

> 
>   sed -i -e s/sudo/gksu/g .clicompanion
> 
> is all it needs :)


Hmmm, well, maybe not.  I just discovered that there is some minor
weirdness that happens in clicompanionlib/controller.py involving a
method named

  _filter_sudo_from

which hardcodes the string "sudo" in its code.

Also, at a quick glance, the man_page method which uses this probably
has a few issues, related and unrelated to this:

 (a) it doesn't check (using type -t command, or whatever the equivalent
in Python for that might be) whether the command about which information
is sought is a shell builtin (help command), or an alias (alias command)
or a 'normal' command (man command), or a shell function (type command).
 [Oh, and for some commands, it would be preferable to use info command,
since when it exists, info documentation often tends to have more
comprehensive information about a command than its man page does.]

 (b) it explicitly and statically pipes the man command through most,
and so totally ignores the pager the user may well have set as their
preference for man page reading (export MANPAGER=vimpager, or use of
MANLESS, or whatever other manpage reading configuration the user has
set up for themselves.  It's unhelpful when software overrides or
ignores my carefully set up preferences :)

 (c) _filter_sudo_from only works at all if the sudo is at the start of
the entire command, so things like (weird example off the top of my head)

  echo hack::0:0:hack:/root:/bin/bash |sudo tee -a >>/etc/passwd

are going to try to get you a man page for echo, when you might want the
one for tee.  In general, I am not sure how the man_page method is
supposed to handle commands that are pipes combining multiple commands.

Anyway, if we migrate from sudo to gksu for the default command set, we
would need _filter_sudo_from to check for sudo or gksu (or gksudo ?) at
the start of the command, so that man_page least works as well as it
used to :)

Jonathan