Bugzilla

(In reply to gwarser from comment #121)
> Are you aware that many people had issue with broken add-ons after update to 77? For example https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/gvc7zd/none_of_my_extensions_work_now_with_firefox_77/
> 
> They said that setting `network.file.disable_unc_paths` = `false` in `about:config` worked for them.
> 
> Is this bug actually fixed? Do setting above pref have any bad side effects?

Hi, 

Thanks for reporting and noticing!

To be honest, I wasn't aware that many people had issues with `network.file.disable_unc_paths` because only one person reported this issue (comment#116). But, we have resolved this in FF78. That issue should be fixed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1634267.

Another way to disable functions that implemented in this ticket in FF77 is to set `dom.quotaManager.useDOSDevicePathSyntax` = `false`.

(In reply to gwarser from comment #121)
> Are you aware that many people had issue with broken add-ons after update to 77? For example https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/gvc7zd/none_of_my_extensions_work_now_with_firefox_77/
> 
> They said that setting `network.file.disable_unc_paths` = `false` in `about:config` worked for them.
> 
> Is this bug actually fixed? Do setting above pref have any bad side effects?

Hi, 

Thanks for reporting and noticing!

To be honest, I wasn't aware that many people had issues with `network.file.disable_unc_paths` because only one person reported this issue (comment#116). But, we have resolved this in FF78. That issue should be fixed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1634267.

Another way to disable functions that implemented in this ticket in FF77 is to set `dom.quotaManager.useDOSDevicePathSyntax` = `false`.

Edit: 

> Is this bug actually fixed? Do setting above pref have any bad side effects?

The add-ons issue should be fixed in FF78. If not, please let me know or file a bug for that. And we will try to fix that soon.

Before FF78, either `dom.quotaManager.useDOSDevicePathSyntax` to  `false`  or  `network.file.disable_unc_paths` to `false`  can avoid the issue.

Setting `dom.quotaManager.useDOSDevicePathSyntax` to  `false` would disable the patches here and thus fix the broken add-ons. The patches here fix the file name too long issue on Windows by using the `\\?\` prefix. 

And `network.file.disable_unc_paths`  is implemented in  Bug 1413868 and it avoids bypassing the proxy setting checks by typing UNC file path in the URL bar. Note that the user must type or paste the text. Webpages along cannot trigger that issue.

In general, I think it should be fine to set  `network.file.disable_unc_paths` to `false` for avoiding the add-ons issue since the pref and the fix in Bug 1413868  is disabled by default.  However, if you still have concerns about that, you can set  `dom.quotaManager.useDOSDevicePathSyntax` to `false` in FF77 and flip it to `true` in FF78.