file associations for OVF files

[Paolo Galtieri]

I recently ran into an issue with files with .ovf extension.  The issue 
is that VMware Workstation will not import files that end in .ovf.  A 
file that ends in .ovf shows up as follows of Fedora 34:

file *.ovf returns

XML 1.0 document, ASCII text

What's interesting is that if you have VirtualBox installed and then try 
to open a .ovf file with VMware workstation it works because according 
to the VirtualBox documentation:

Oracle VM VirtualBox creates file type associations automatically for 
any OVF and OVA files on your host OS.

In fact if I run caja and click my way to the OVF file, right click on 
the file and look at the properties I get:

Type: Open Virtualization Format (application/x-virtualbox-ovf)

If I don't have VirtualBox installed I get

Type: XML document (application/xml)

So who should setup the file association for .ovf files?  How do I go 
about changing the association for .ovf files from XML document to 
something else so that I can associate it with VMware Workstation?

Any help is appreciated.

I have reported this issue to VMware also.

Thanks,
Paolo

[Samuel Sieb]

On 2021-05-10 5:05 p.m., Paolo Galtieri wrote:
> I recently ran into an issue with files with .ovf extension.  The issue 
> is that VMware Workstation will not import files that end in .ovf.  A 
> file that ends in .ovf shows up as follows of Fedora 34:
>
> file *.ovf returns
>
> XML 1.0 document, ASCII text

"file" tells you what the actual content is.  In this case, I assume, 
it's an XML file.  The mime-type however, can also be determined by the 
file extension.
> What's interesting is that if you have VirtualBox installed and then try 
> to open a .ovf file with VMware workstation it works because according 
> to the VirtualBox documentation:
>
> Oracle VM VirtualBox creates file type associations automatically for 
> any OVF and OVA files on your host OS.
>
> In fact if I run caja and click my way to the OVF file, right click on 
> the file and look at the properties I get:
>
> Type: Open Virtualization Format (application/x-virtualbox-ovf)
>
> If I don't have VirtualBox installed I get
>
> Type: XML document (application/xml)
>
> So who should setup the file association for .ovf files?  How do I go 
> about changing the association for .ovf files from XML document to 
> something else so that I can associate it with VMware Workstation?

VMware is proprietary software and any file associations should be 
managed by it.  If you're installing vmware and it doesn't set up its 
file extensions, then that's a problem with its packaging.  Nothing to 
do with Fedora.