Xdg-open is indecisive and causes applications to not respond!

Question

For some reason, xdg-open will not respond usually when only called once on a file. Repeating the command rapidly however will work eventually (!?)
$ touch foo.txt
$ xdg-open foo.txt
$ xdg-open foo.txt
$ xdg-open foo.txt # after rapid [up-key]+[enter]s, this will work, for example
$ xdg-mime query filetype foo.txt
text/plain
$ xdg-mime query default text/plain
org.gnome.gedit.desktop
It looks like everything should work fine, from the examples given above, but the problem is there. As a result, I have to repeat the command rapidly in the command line to work, and in Chromium I have to keep on clicking "open in folder" to get Nautilus to launch
I remember when the problem started - it was when I installed libreoffice, and for whatever not-so-smart reason, it sets itself as the default app for text/plain, and application/javascript, in my limited usage. So I used:
$ xdg-mime default gedit.desktop text/plain
$ xdg-mime default gedit.desktop application/javascript
... to try and solve the issue, however I faced the same symptoms I am facing now, and even after removing .local/applications/*, I'm still experiencing the same problems
I'm in desperate need of some help, and would appreciate anyone who has insight on this

Answer 1

I've had this bug ever since GNOME 3.14 came in to Arch but have never found anybody else reporting it so I thought it was something specific to my configuration. Glad to see some others have it!
If you run xdg-open once then it does start nautilus but nautilus does not open the window, e.g. "xdg-open .". Nautilus will stay running for about 1 min and it you run xdg-open again within that time it will work and open the window. As soon as Nautilus stops (or after you stop it with nautlius -q), then the next invocation of xdg-open will not work.
PS later edit: I should point out that, consistent with my description of the problem above, if you use Nautilus to manage your desktop (i.e. set "Icons on Desktop" in GNOME Tweak Tool) then you won't see this bug because Nautilus is always running.
Last edited by bulletmark (2014-12-22 05:34:16)