1167873 - Functional regression: no alternative for "-P <profile> -remote 'openURL(<url>)'"

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 441422

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Ancoron]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150511103303

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have at least two Firefox profiles (named profile #1 and #2 further down)
2. open Firefox instance for profile #1
3. open Firefox instance for profile #2
4. execute "firefox -P <profile-#2> -new-tab <url>"
5. execute "firefox -P <profile-#2> -new-window <url>"



Actual results:

case 4.: <url> is opened in a new tab in Firefox instance for profile #1
case 5.: <url> is opened in a new window for profile #1



Expected results:

case 4.: <url> is opened in a new tab in Firefox instance for profile #2
case 5.: <url> is opened in a new window for profile #2

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

Bug 441422, comment 12

Comment 2

[Ancoron]

OK, if I read bug 441422 correctly, the profiles feature is being treated second- or third-class citizen and will be removed eventually?

If that is the case, you should state that inside the documentation, especially in any reference that externals developers might use.

Is there any way I can get the behavior as documented?

Comment 3

[Gingerbread Man]

There's no plan to remove the command line parameters that I know of (bug 214675, comment 107). It's just the profile manager UI that's slated for removal. Considering development has stalled on the replacement standalone profile manager, I wouldn't expect this to happen anytime soon.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Profile_Manager

As for how to get the behavior you want, I think that discussion belongs in bug 1167869.

Comment 4

[Ancoron]

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #3)
> There's no plan to remove the command line parameters that I know of (bug
> 214675, comment 107).

Well, I was looking at bug 1080319, which removes the -remote option and proposes the "new style remoting" aka. "-new-tab" and "-new-window", which made me test that "replacement" with the result of the current bug report.

> It's just the profile manager UI that's slated for
> removal. Considering development has stalled on the replacement standalone
> profile manager, I wouldn't expect this to happen anytime soon.
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Profile_Manager

I don't care much about the Profile Manager UI as long as a command-line way of creating profiles (or some documented instructions how to do that manually exists for automation.

> 
> As for how to get the behavior you want, I think that discussion belongs in
> bug 1167869.

Well, I intentionally separated those two because bug 1167869 is just about the documented behavior of the profile arguments with a Firefox instance already running while this bug is more about the new-style remoting as proposed in bug 1080319.

Of course, my underlying use-case is the same, but those are two independent issues (documentation vs. functionality).

Comment 5

[Ancoron]

Just tested with a Firefox 41.0.

The new style remoting options seem to work now correctly.

As such, a suitable alternative is available.