105044 - Cannot run two diff. builds of Mozilla simultaneously

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 40109

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:0.9.5) Gecko/20011011
BuildID:    

Spun off of bug 89781, imo probably blocking that bug.

If you have two different versions of Mozilla on your machine, you cannot run
them both at the same time.  By attempting to start the second one, you will end
up starting another window of the first.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Download Moz0.9.5 milestone build into one directory.  (I used the Talkback
Zip.)
2.  Download another Mozilla build (nightly is fine, I used the Talkback zip
from 10-16)
3.  Navigate in the OS to the 0.9.5 directory, double-click mozilla.exe.
4.  Type about: in the location bar.
5.  Navigate in the OS to the other Mozilla build directory, double-click
mozilla.exe
6.  Type about: in the location bar of the new window.


Actual Results:  Splash screen on first mozilla.exe startup, not on second.
User agent strings match exactly.
Second window pops up much too quickly.
Both windows are Moz0.9.5 milestone build.

Expected Results:  Splash screen on both mozilla.exe startups.
User agent strings do not match exactly.
Second window pops up at normal rate.
First window is Moz0.9.5 milestone build, second window is nightly build.

I have also seen this problem with instances of Netscape.  However,
Netscape-Mozilla "crossovers" do not happen.

Someone once suggested to me adding profiles in Netscape 6.x would allow me to
rectify this problem.  I have not attempted this yet.  I am not certain if
Mozilla allows profiles or not.

Nonetheless, this is not good when it interferes with cross-version checking.

Comment 1

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

As directed by Jesse Ruderman in bug 89781, adding memory leak keyword.

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

dup of bug 40109?

Comment 3

[timeless]

sure, this is all of: WorksForMe, Invalid, and Duplicate.

Steps to reproduce (this is w98):
install a nightly (this is 2001101117), install a release in a different
directory (i used 0.9.5). rename one of the binaries (i renamed the nightly to
dozilla.exe). run each (dozilla, mozilla), select different profiles when
prompted -- not doing so is asking mozilla to help shoot itself continuously and
repeatedly.
results: i have 2 mozilla applications running.  fwiw I could name one
mailzla.exe if i wanted to -- i might just do that.

to create profiles you can use mozilla -profilemanager.

on irc i wrote:
the memory leak keyword is bogus
from our perspective the bug is [approximately] invalid
you can't run more than one instance of ie or nc or nav w/o trickery either
however, you should be able to run both one instance of mozilla and one of
netscape6.x
... so ... can you provide a reason that this should work? if so, i'll spend the
time hunting to dupe it? otherwise i'll invalidate it

but rkaa did the dupe hunting for me :-)

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 40109 ***

Comment 4

[timeless]

erm. ignore the w98-WFM. i'm just waking up and it didn't actually work on 98
(well it's being strange, i am able to get profile manager to come up sometimes,
but not consistently -- we do have bugs about that, and i don't think it's
actually honoring the choice ...).

however it's quite easy on NT (run switcher, run mozilla, switch to another
deskstation, run a different mozilla).

this bug does not in any way shape or form match the definition of 'critical'
|Critical crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak| see
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/bug_status.html#severity

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

This would be a critical memory leak bug if Mozilla remained in memory with no 
windows open, because it would be effectively impossible to exit.  (Note that 
the previous statement only holds for Win32/Linux, with quick launch off.)  
I've had this happen to me several times (mostly bug 77072), and I have had to 
use the windows task manager to kill Mozilla.

In the case where some windows are still open, re-using the Mozilla process 
helps performance and makes profile corruption less likely.  It also makes 
things hard for some testers (bug 40109), especially when they want to test 
crash bugs.