Comment 5 for bug 1259721

I'm afraid I can't reproduce the original problem here. If I run this test, I see a few windows (Mahjong, terminal, etc.) flying by, and after a few seconds it crashes with

$ autopilot run autopilot.tests.functional.test_open_window.OpenWindowTests.test_open_window
Loading tests from: /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages

Tests running...

** (gedit:16944): WARNING **: Could not load Gedit repository: Typelib file for namespace 'GtkSource', version '3.0' not found
======================================================================
ERROR: autopilot.tests.functional.test_open_window.OpenWindowTests.test_open_window(System Settings)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
_StringException: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/autopilot/tests/functional/test_open_window.py", line 44, in test_open_window
    win = self.process_manager.start_app_window(self.app_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/autopilot/process/_bamf.py", line 139, in start_app_window
    window = self._open_window(app_name, files, locale)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/autopilot/process/_bamf.py", line 164, in _open_window
    self._launch_application(app['desktop-file'], files)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/autopilot/process/_bamf.py", line 329, in _launch_application
    proc = Gio.DesktopAppInfo.new(desktop_file)
TypeError: constructor returned NULL

Ran 7 tests in 8.227s
FAILED (failures=1)

and it behaves exactly the same way with "... | tee /tmp/foo". Trunk shows the exact same behaviour with

  python -m autopilot.run run autopilot.tests.functional.test_open_window.OpenWindowTests.test_open_window | tee /tmp/foo

I understand this would only hang if there is an application which does not close automatically again. Does that happen in your case?