Add message/rfc822 to thunderbird.desktop

Thanks, that's an upstream issue, could you report it to them on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi ?

When you do report it upstream, please share the link to the upstream bug report here. Thanks!

@seb128 I'm not sure it's upstream. <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=371734> has been around forever and was marked as duplicate of the still open <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296568> where it appears Mozilla doesn't want to do anything about it. The earliest ancestor of that file I can find in the source is from 2010 <https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mozillateam/thunderbird/thunderbird.groovy/revision/115#debian/thunderbird-3.0.desktop>.

Indeed the desktop file for thunderbird is not upstream, it's part of the packaging.

Fixed with https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mozillateam/thunderbird/thunderbird.jammy/revision/675.

This bug was fixed in the package thunderbird - 1:91.6.1+build1-0ubuntu1

---------------
thunderbird (1:91.6.1+build1-0ubuntu1) jammy; urgency=medium

  * New upstream stable release (91.6.1build1)

 -- Olivier Tilloy <email address hidden> Mon, 14 Feb 2022 20:35:29 +0100

Thank you for updating the .desktop file.

The issue is more hairy than it seems at first glance. E.g. https://debbugs.gnu.org/ sends "Content-disposition" header with ".mbox" suffix when a single comment in mbox format is requested (to reply to particular message). Thunderbird believes that a suitable action is to compose a new message with downloaded file as an attachment.

There is no command line option to force thunderbird to open a file as namely mail message. The position of developers is that such file must have ".eml" extension otherwise it is not a message. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1755454 for details (bug title has been changed to fix a loosely related issue).

Thanks for the additional insights Max. If I understand correctly, that's not an issue that can be fixed by merely updating the desktop file or packaging parameters of thunderbird in Ubuntu, it would have to be addressed by the upstream project.

> If I understand correctly, that's not an issue that can be fixed
> by merely updating the desktop file or packaging parameters
> of thunderbird in Ubuntu, it would have to be addressed
> by the upstream project.

I have added a comment to make users (who will face a problem despite a fix) aware of idiosyncrasy of handling command line options by thunderbird.

I do not expect that Ubuntu team will ship additional wrapper to deal with the issue. Those, who desperately need it working, may write a script that creates a symlink with ".eml" suffix and a desktop file to open "message/rfc822" files using this script.

I am afraid that security issues might happen because mozilla soft relies too much on heuristics and does not allow to explicitly express intention through command line options. It is even impossible to ensure that nothing following should be considered as options, remaining arguments are URIs or files ("--" separator for a lot of tools).

Anyway the fix is a step forward. At least files having ".eml" suffix may be conveniently viewed.

Ack, thanks for the detailed rationale Max. Users who come across the issue will indeed appreciate to find an explanation here.