1087362 - Attempting to launch an app gives an error "Unable to parse environment files for application startup"

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Webapp Runtime, defect, P3)

Description

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

I have not dogfooded our app stuff much at all but decided to try installing and launching an app on FF Alder. The result of attempting to launch is the error:
"Unable to parse environment files for application startup".

(On my regular nightly FF I currently don't seem to be able to install apps, the throbber on the "Free" button just spins)

Comment 1

[Mathieu Pillard [:mat]]

A few questions to understand what's going on:
- Which app were you testing with ?
- Which version of FF are you using precisely ? (Build identifier, platform)
- Do you see any errors in the browser console when launching ?

Comment 2

[Andy McKay]

Myk, don't have too many details here but it sounds like Desktop and the error code lead me to this line in dxr:

http://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/webapprt/mac/webapprt.mm

It sounds like there might be issues with the install outside of the Marketplace. Any insight?

Comment 3

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

If your Mac OS version is 10.9.5 or 10.10.*, then I suspect this is bug 1064910, the fix for which has landed for 34 but not for 33 (nor Alder, which is based on 33).  Do you see the bug with the latest Nightly build of Firefox?  (You can also try testing on Firefox Beta or Aurora, but beware bug 1091109.)

Comment 4

[Gerard Braad]

I get a lot of reports of Mac users with Firefox 34 about this over the last couple of days related to my published application.

Comment 5

[Bill Walker [:bwalker] [@wfwalker]]

(In reply to Gerard Braad from comment #4)
> I get a lot of reports of Mac users with Firefox 34 about this over the last
> couple of days related to my published application.

Hi Gerard, can you ask one of your users to delete and reinstall your app? We believe that will fix the problem.

Comment 6

[Phil Webb]

I'm a user of Gerard's app. I tried deleting the webapps folder from my profiles directory, restarting firefox then installing and running the application again. I'm afraid I got the same error.

Comment 7

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl]]

Thanks, Phil. When this occurs, how many different Firefox .app bundles are on the system? One way to tell is to do a search in Finder for "firefox", select "This Mac" to search the whole system, then click the plus button just below the search bar and choose "Kind" -> "Application". By selecting each one of them, the version should be displayed on the right side of the Finder window. It'd be great if you could paste the version for each one of them.

It would also be great to get the name of the app so we can test on our side.

Comment 8

[Gerard Braad]

To perform a remove/uninstall of the application would also mean the LocalStorage for this application is removed, correct?

Comment 9

[Phil Webb]

@Stephen I have just a single Firefox application installed v34.0.5.

@Gerard I couldn't find many details about how to uninstall Firefox applications. I took a guess that removing the webapps folder would be enough. Let me know if I should also delete data from elsewhere.

Comment 10

[Phil Webb]

I've just tried running `/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -Profilemanager`, creating a new profile and then installing the app again. That appears to have worked.

Comment 11

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

The app is actually installed into the /Applications folder, as a Mac application bundle (with a .app extension, although usually Mac doesn't show the extension on the bundles).  So that's what you need to move to the trash in order to uninstall the app.

Comment 12

[Jesse Ali]

so... I can delete it without losing all my passwords? I was under the impression that would make me lose all the passwords I am so desperate to retrieve... this is google a google 2 step verification password generator that Gerard has created, and I am locked out of multiple highly important accounts because it is not working. 

Is there somewhere I can see inside the app to retrieve my secret keys used, so I can put them into a different app that does the same thing (like on my phone, for example)?

Or revert to an older version of firefox? use beta? Pretty desperate here.

Comment 13

[Gerard Braad]

Off-topic: @Jesse Ali The keys are stored in LocalStorage (or Webappsstore.sqlite). It depends on where Firefox stores this database. It would need something like: sqlite3 $HOME/.gauthauthenticator-XX/YY.default/webappsstore.sqlite 'select * from webappsstore2 where scope like "ln.daarbg%";'  See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1260229

Comment 14

[Gerard Braad]

Off-topic: @Jesse Ali The command that works for me is sqlite3 $HOME/.gauthauthenticator-*/*.default/webappsstore.sqlite 'select * from webappsstore2;'

Comment 15

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Per bug 1238079, we're going to disable the desktop web runtime and remove it from the codebase, so we won't fix these bugs in it.