1135551 - bookmarks.html in browser/defaults/profile is not imported on first startup if firefox is launched with -profile option

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: XPCOM, defect)

Description

[Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro)]

If firefox is launched with -P option, the bookmarks.html is imported correctly.

This issue can be reproduced only on official builds (nightly and ESR31), but cannot be reproduced on local build (2015-02-23 mozilla-central).

Comment 1

[Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro)]

Attachment: Copy default profile in case of -profile option and if the path does not exist

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=89d23ee77e6b

If the path specified by -profile option does not exist, the path is created but default profile is not copied there. Files in default profile should be copied.

Comment 2

[Till Schneidereit [:till]]

(In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #1)
> If the path specified by -profile option does not exist, the path is created
> but default profile is not copied there. Files in default profile should be
> copied.

No, please don't change this. Being able to create temporary clean profiles for testing is extremely valuable, and copying over files from the default profile would completely destroy that.

Comment 3

[Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro)]

(In reply to Till Schneidereit [:till] from comment #2)
> (In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #1)
> > If the path specified by -profile option does not exist, the path is created
> > but default profile is not copied there. Files in default profile should be
> > copied.
> 
> No, please don't change this. Being able to create temporary clean profiles
> for testing is extremely valuable, and copying over files from the default
> profile would completely destroy that.

Hmmmm, how can we launch firefox properly with the following option?

 firefox.exe -profile [SOMEWHERE]\%USERNAME%\

Comment 4

[Till Schneidereit [:till]]

(In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #3)
> Hmmmm, how can we launch firefox properly with the following option?
> 
>  firefox.exe -profile [SOMEWHERE]\%USERNAME%\

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "properly". If you want to copy over the bookmarks.html file, then you can just do that, no? Firefox shouldn't try to guess which parts of your default profile you want to copy over to a new profile.

Comment 5

[Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro)]

Comment on attachment 8569464 [details] [diff] [review]
Copy default profile in case of -profile option and if the path does not exist

Clearing review flag

Comment 6

[Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro)]

(In reply to Till Schneidereit [:till] from comment #4)
> (In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #3)
> > Hmmmm, how can we launch firefox properly with the following option?
> > 
> >  firefox.exe -profile [SOMEWHERE]\%USERNAME%\
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "properly". If you want to copy
> over the bookmarks.html file, then you can just do that, no? Firefox
> shouldn't try to guess which parts of your default profile you want to copy
> over to a new profile.

(In reply to Till Schneidereit [:till] from comment #4)
> (In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #3)
> > Hmmmm, how can we launch firefox properly with the following option?
> > 
> >  firefox.exe -profile [SOMEWHERE]\%USERNAME%\
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "properly". If you want to copy
> over the bookmarks.html file, then you can just do that, no? Firefox
> shouldn't try to guess which parts of your default profile you want to copy
> over to a new profile.

But the default profile is coped into profile folder on first launch if no option is specified. It seems inconsistency for me. 

For company use, there is a demand for creating user profile folder on a certain place. E.g. network drive (Z:\Users\%USERNAME%\). In this case user can use -profile option but the user will notice bookmark file or some other files in browser/defaults/profile are not imported in their profile.

Comment 7

[Till Schneidereit [:till]]

(In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #6)
> But the default profile is coped into profile folder on first launch if no
> option is specified. It seems inconsistency for me.

I'm not sure I follow. When I launch Firefox with the -P option and create a new profile in the profile manager, it gets created completely empty, without anything being copied over from my default profile.
 
> 
> For company use, there is a demand for creating user profile folder on a
> certain place. E.g. network drive (Z:\Users\%USERNAME%\). In this case user
> can use -profile option but the user will notice bookmark file or some other
> files in browser/defaults/profile are not imported in their profile.

I don't fully understand this use-case, I think. Are you saying that a company might change its policies about where the browser profile has to be stored, and you want to make it as easy as possible to implement the new policy? If the policy is pre-existing, why would the user have a local profile in the first place?

Comment 8

[Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro)]

(In reply to Till Schneidereit [:till] from comment #7)
> (In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #6)
> > But the default profile is coped into profile folder on first launch if no
> > option is specified. It seems inconsistency for me.
> 
> I'm not sure I follow. When I launch Firefox with the -P option and create a
> new profile in the profile manager, it gets created completely empty,
> without anything being copied over from my default profile.

As you may notice, administrator of those companies won't let users choose the folder because most of users don't know where is a proper place in the company policy. And administrator lets users use firefox without any user interactions (dialog, prompt, etc.).

-- Off topic --

As far as I know, most of company in Japan set some preference to prevent UIs. e.g. browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser=false.

-- Off topic --

> > For company use, there is a demand for creating user profile folder on a
> > certain place. E.g. network drive (Z:\Users\%USERNAME%\). In this case user
> > can use -profile option but the user will notice bookmark file or some other
> > files in browser/defaults/profile are not imported in their profile.
> 
> I don't fully understand this use-case, I think. Are you saying that a
> company might change its policies about where the browser profile has to be
> stored, and you want to make it as easy as possible to implement the new
> policy?

Yes, exactly.

> If the policy is pre-existing, why would the user have a local
> profile in the first place?

Actually Z:\Users exists, but Z:\Users\%USERNAME% does not exist by default because of saving disk space.

Comment 9

[Till Schneidereit [:till]]

(In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #8)
> As you may notice, administrator of those companies won't let users choose
> the folder because most of users don't know where is a proper place in the
> company policy. And administrator lets users use firefox without any user
> interactions (dialog, prompt, etc.).

This sounds like the user cannot ever have had a local profile from which files would be copied over.

> > I don't fully understand this use-case, I think. Are you saying that a
> > company might change its policies about where the browser profile has to be
> > stored, and you want to make it as easy as possible to implement the new
> > policy?
> 
> Yes, exactly.

But here you say that this is about migrating profiles. Is it up to the user to do the migration, because the get sent an email saying "after tomorrow, no local browser profiles are allowed, please migrate them over to this new location"? If so, the easiest way to accomplish that seems to be to, well, copy the profile and then use the profile manager to open it from its new location.

Note that the -profile option doesn't persist, so the user would have to start Firefox with that option indefinitely if no further steps are taken.

> 
> > If the policy is pre-existing, why would the user have a local
> > profile in the first place?
> 
> Actually Z:\Users exists, but Z:\Users\%USERNAME% does not exist by default
> because of saving disk space.

I didn't mean whether the profile exists, but whether the *policy* does, whether this is a new requirement or not.

Comment 10

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This bug seems to have wandered, but the original request that we should copy profile defaults to a new profile is WONTFIX. We explicitly have decided not to do this and removed the code which previously did it, see bug 768814 for details.