Summary

First we added apt: support to Firefox, making software installation easier. This spec proposes to add a "run:" handler to launch software from a web page.

Rationale

Useful and dangerous.

Running sofware with a single click could be dangerous, but a wide range of possibilities come to scene:

• Web (wiki) recipes with automatic links to required tools
• User manual with links to (python?) assistants
• Support Team mails with links to scripts.

In order to make this runnable urls as safe as possible, whitelists or a secure directory with links to allowed apps could be the solution.

User stories

An user is reading a Ubuntu forum with some kind of recipe about configuring fonts, but he/she doesn't know how to launch font-config-dialog. Another user post a link "run:fontconfig-voodoo" so the first one just need to click on it.

An html manual could include a link to run an assistant for network configuration right from its pages.

I want to design a nice & simple desktop for my parents with only a few big icons, but I have no programming skills. However, I can set a local html page up with launchers for them.

Authoring tools like Ubuntu Tweaks would be really easy with little knowledge about gtk interface.

Design

URls beggining with "run:" should trigger (in Firefox at least) a wrapper application (/usr/bin/run-url) to control execution permissions.

"run-url" will parse and check the second part (program name) of the URL. If this program is part of a distribution package, execution is granted with no more dialogs.

A simple 'dpkg -S' will do the job.

Implementation

• A package with Firefox tweaks (similar to apturl) is needed, although anyone can test the launcher script tweaking the about:config page or including a run-url.js file in /etc/firefox-x/ containing these lines:

pref("network.protocol-handler.app.run","/usr/bin/run-url");
pref("network.protocol-handler.warn-external.run",false);

• A simple dialog to allow/disallow runnable sofware could be needed as well.

  • (see https://launchpad.net/run-url)

Sample test page

This wiki doesn't support run:// links, so download and save this page in order to test run-url:

My Programs

Discussion

• AlfonsoDeCala: another runurl project already exists in launchpad with a different focus. That one download and execute scripts from Internet (really insecure IMHO). In order to avoid confussion, this firefox-run-url should use a different name for the plugin: "run-url" or "execurl"