evolution not following system preferences

[David Ronis <ronis ronispc chem mcgill ca>]

I'm running the git/master of evolution and related packages.  In
addition, I've got glib-2.27.2 and gvfs 1.7.0 installed.  

What has recently happened is that evolution no longer uses my desktop
preferences -> preferred applications; in particular, my default browser
is firefox, but evolution has started using epiphany when I try to view
an URL in e-mail.

Milan Crha cooked up a patch for evolution that gets around this
problem, but it's not trivial to implement (it has to be applied twice,
once for http and once for https, running evolution after each, and then
reverting the patch altogether).  Basically, something gets reset, but
he (and I) haven't a clue as to what and where this takes place.
Apparently evolution relies on glib/gvfs to deal with this.

Any suggestions?

I don't subscribe to this list, so please CC me on any reply.

Thanks in advance.  

David