1059821 - "file://" determines content type using suffix of symlink target, not of symlink itself

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Networking: File, defect, P5)

Description

[Greg Colyer]

Type into URL bar
file:///path/to/foo.html

foo.html is a symlink to foo.php (both in the same directory)

Prior to my most recent Firefox update, this would render the file as HTML.

Now (v29.0.1), a dialog appears asking what application should be used to open foo.php; i.e. Firefox has resolved the symlink (to a presumably unknown type).

Comment 1

[Greg Colyer]

Confirmed that a hard link (as opposed to a symlink) still works as before.

Not clear why you would want hard links and symlinks to behave differently in this respect. Specifically, a URL is "a way of fetching" a resource, and it seems appropriate to be able to deliver the same object (URI?) via different URLs, possibly with different semantics.

Comment 2

[Greg Colyer]

In other words, whilst it may be necessary to resolve the symlink for other purposes (internally to the file-scheme handler), this should not (effectively) "change the URL" (to the front end). Exactly as if the http scheme were being used: a web server might resolve a local symlink (for example to check the file's real location with respect to the document tree), but the client would not be able to tell this from the response.

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

What is the last version of Firefox that works as expected on your system ?

Comment 4

[Greg Colyer]

I'm not sure. It was certainly no earlier than v3.6.2 (the last actual installer I can find, but this may not be very helpful). Preferences>Advanced>Update>Show Update History is blank. Is there a log I can look at somewhere? (This is on Mac OS X 10.6.8.)

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

ok, this is no recent change then ?

Comment 6

[Greg Colyer]

I can't tell based on the above, only that it isn't ancient.

Comment 7

[Greg Colyer]

Any argument against comment #1 and comment #2?

Comment 8

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Bulk change to priority: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1399258