open_url is a small utility to open *.url files under GNU/Linux.

These files are Ini files used in Windows, which have this format:

[InternetShortcut]
URL=https://github.com/mgrojo/open_url

open_url uses xdg-open (from the xdg-utils package in Debian/Ubuntu) to actually open the URL in your favorite browser.

How to build

• Install Alire
• Build using alr build. All the dependencies are installed and managed by Alire.

How to install

The tool can be installed using Alire 2.0 with this command:

alr install

Refer to Alire documentation on how to add the Alire default installation to the PATH variable or how to change the default installation prefix.

Use a pre-built AppImage version

You can download a pre-built AppImage from the Releases section in GitHub. For using the file, give it execution permissions and rename it to open_url.

mv Open_URL-x86_64.AppImage ~/.local/bin/open_url
chmod +x open_url

To build the AppImage version yourself, just run:

make AppImage

How to run

From the command line:

Usage: open_url <file.url>

If you want to open the URL files from the graphical file manager, you have to integrate open_url in your desktop environment. One way is to use AppImageLauncher to integrate the AppImage version.

Alternatively, you can perform the integration manually: put open_url in the PATH for programs and the open_url.desktop file in one of the standard locations for desktop files, for example:

mv open_url ~/.local/bin/
cp open_url.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
update-desktop-database

Then, from the file manager, you should be able to select Open URL as application to open *.url files.