webbrowser broken on Mac OS X when using the BROWSER variable

[sconseil]

BPO	24955
Nosy	@ronaldoussoren, @orsenthil, @ned-deily, @dhellmann, @grimreaper, @hudelgado, @akulakov
PRs	bpo-24955: Fix webbrowser broken on Mac OS X when using the BROWSER variable #27751
Files	webbrowser.patch 24955.diff

^{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 = 'https://github.com/orsenthil'
closed_at = None
created_at = <Date 2015-08-29.10:01:40.688>
labels = ['OS-mac', 'library', '3.11']
title = 'webbrowser broken on Mac OS X when using the BROWSER variable'
updated_at = <Date 2021-08-17.16:46:29.259>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/sconseil'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2021-08-17.16:46:29.259>
actor = 'corona10'
assignee = 'orsenthil'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Library (Lib)', 'macOS']
creation = <Date 2015-08-29.10:01:40.688>
creator = 'sconseil'
dependencies = []
files = ['40291', '49341']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 24955
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 13.0
messages = ['249316', '249317', '257198', '257962', '258120', '258122', '374220', '374221', '374223', '374231', '374358', '399394', '399488']
nosy_count = 10.0
nosy_names = ['ehuss', 'ronaldoussoren', 'orsenthil', 'ned.deily', 'doughellmann', 'eitan.adler', 'sconseil', '_kud', 'hudelgado', 'andrei.avk']
pr_nums = ['27751']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = 'patch review'
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue24955'
versions = ['Python 3.11']

[sconseil]

Hi,

There is an issue in the webbrowser module for Mac OS when the BROWSER environment variable is set:

Python 2.7.10 (default, Jul 14 2015, 19:46:27)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.0 (clang-600.0.39)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Jedi is not installed, falling back to readline
Python shell history: /Users/simon/.pythonhistory
>>> import webbrowser
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/webbrowser.py", line 669, in <module>
    cmd = _synthesize(cmdline, -1)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/webbrowser.py", line 94, in _synthesize
    if controller and name.lower() == controller.basename:
AttributeError: 'MacOSXOSAScript' object has no attribute 'basename'

If I unset BROWSER then it works fine. The issue is that the MacOSXOSAScript class overrides BaseBrowser's init without redifining the basename attribute. So a simple fix is to remove the __init__ from MacOSXOSAScript (and I guess the same applies to the MacOSX class). The same issue applies to python 3.4

[sconseil]

New version of the patch to rename the _name attribute to name as in other BaseBrowser subclasses.

[kud]

+1

I've got like 3 apps which are broken.

• Doesn't work on Mac OS X Yosemite? mkdocs/mkdocs#465
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1012443

[orsenthil]

The patch is correct and will fix the issue. It will require test coverage to be complete so that we don't land upon similar issues in future.

[sconseil]

I have looked at the webbrowser tests and it seems not so easy: currently the MacOS browser classes are not tested, and they don't the GenericBrowser base class. Instead they use custom code with os.popen, so it would require some work either replace os.popen with subprocess.Popen, or to mock the os.popen calls. I'm not sure I will the time to dig into this.

[orsenthil]

Simon, sure. It is just for someone, either commiters or other interested folks to add the tests on top of your patch. Agree with you that more change is required to add the required tests.

[hudelgado]

I've bumped into this and won't mind working on it, is it ok for me to try to finish it?

[orsenthil]

Hugo, please go ahead and a test for this patch.

[hudelgado]

Ok, I'm thinking in also replace the os.popen calls with subprocess.Popen to keep consistency with existing tests.
Do you think it's a good approach? Or should be better to just add some tests around the current implementation?

[orsenthil]

Hugo, I'd welcome such a change.

[hudelgado]

I took a look at it and have a some more questions.
The class MacOSX(BaseBrowser) seems to be broken because it uses 'OpenUrl' which doesn't work in most recent versions of applescript, also that class doesn't seem to be used anywhere, is it ok to remove it, or should left it as is?
Although that class isn't used it contained an hack to open local files that didn't exist in the class MacOSXOSAScript(BaseBrowser), i've added that hack to the MacOSXOSAScript.
Can you validate if everything seems ok with this changes?
I'm happy to adjust things according to what you suggest.

[akulakov]

Also see https://bugs.python.org/issue42255

Hugo: can you convert the patch to a PR?

[hudelgado]

Yes, I've created a PR for it.

#27751

Happy to adapt it as needed.
Thanks

[ronaldoussoren]

This works in the current releases for 3.9, 3.10, 3.11 and 3.12: BROWSER=chrome python3 -m webbrowser http://www.python.org/.

That means this issue is no longer needed.

[schiebel]

I do not see the behavior that @ronaldoussoren describes:

bash$ python -V
Python 3.10.13
bash$ BROWSER=chrome python -m webbrowser http://www.python.org/ ## OPENS IN DEFAULT BROWSER

bash$ BROWSER=safari python -m webbrowser http://www.python.org/ ## ALSO OPENS IN DEFAULT BROWSER

bash$ BROWSER=/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari python -m webbrowser http://www.python.org/
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/drs/develop/python/conda/envs/bokeh-32/lib/python3.10/runpy.py", line 196, in _run_module_as_main
    return _run_code(code, main_globals, None,
  File "/Users/drs/develop/python/conda/envs/bokeh-32/lib/python3.10/runpy.py", line 86, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "/Users/drs/develop/python/conda/envs/bokeh-32/lib/python3.10/webbrowser.py", line 717, in <module>
    main()
  File "/Users/drs/develop/python/conda/envs/bokeh-32/lib/python3.10/webbrowser.py", line 712, in main
    open(url, new_win)
  File "/Users/drs/develop/python/conda/envs/bokeh-32/lib/python3.10/webbrowser.py", line 83, in open
    register_standard_browsers()
  File "/Users/drs/develop/python/conda/envs/bokeh-32/lib/python3.10/webbrowser.py", line 591, in register_standard_browsers
    cmd = _synthesize(cmdline, preferred=True)
  File "/Users/drs/develop/python/conda/envs/bokeh-32/lib/python3.10/webbrowser.py", line 127, in _synthesize
    if controller and name.lower() == controller.basename:
AttributeError: 'MacOSXOSAScript' object has no attribute 'basename'
bash$ 

Chrome is my default browser, but sometimes it is helpful to be able to test in Safari.