162249 - Running external program - lack of decent error messages

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: File Handling, defect, P3)

Description

[Tim Connors]

I am using 1.0.0 here, but I verified this for 1.1b as well....

When I open up a (e.g.) .ps document, and I have the viewer incorrectly set, I
get an error "blah could not be opened, because an unknown error occurred\nSorry
 about that".

Very appologetic and all, but couldn't it actually tell me what went wrong? Ie,
the file name of the program I entered does not exist? (or that it ran out of
memory, or that it could not fork, or whatever)

Steps to reproduce: Open up a .ps file, get promted with 
"open or save" dialog, go to advanced, tell it that the program to run is
"/filedoesnotexist", press ok, press ok.

You may think that I am being pathological, but here we have an nfs system, and
I have my defaults set up on alpha, but when I go to linux it mysteriously fails
all the time.....

Comment 1

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

confirming... while the helper app dialog no longer lets you enter nonexistant
files, you can still do it in preferences, and you do get the mentioned error
message.

Comment 2

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

-> me

Comment 3

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Attachment: patch

give a nice error message if the helper app doesn't exist

Comment 4

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Comment on attachment 128184 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

please ignore the removal of the #ifdef, I won't check that in

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Comment on attachment 128184 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Nice.  r=me.

Comment 6

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 128184 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

sr=darin

Comment 7

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Checking in uriloader/exthandler/nsExternalHelperAppService.cpp;
/cvsroot/mozilla/uriloader/exthandler/nsExternalHelperAppService.cpp,v  <-- 
nsExternalHelperAppService.cpp
new revision: 1.204; previous revision: 1.203
done
Checking in
embedding/components/webbrowserpersist/locale/en-US/nsWebBrowserPersist.properties;
/cvsroot/mozilla/embedding/components/webbrowserpersist/locale/en-US/nsWebBrowserPersist.properties,v
 <--  nsWebBrowserPersist.properties
new revision: 1.3; previous revision: 1.2
done

Comment 8

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

*** Bug 154533 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 58667 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***