Closed Bug 1265322 Opened 8 years ago Closed 8 years ago

Create "Nightly" profile to make it easy to run Nightly alongside stable/normal Firefox

Categories

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1255740

People

(Reporter: nachtigall, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Build ID: 20160407164938

Steps to reproduce:

Trying to start Nightly while stable/normal Firefox is already running.


Actual results:

Instead of Nightly, the normal Firefox starts.


Expected results:

Nightly should be started.

I would be very easy to fix if Nightly would create its own default Profile the very same way the "Firefox Developer Edition" does. After googling I found that other users found the solution by doing it yourself:
http://superuser.com/questions/679797/how-to-run-firefox-nightly-alongside-firefox-at-the-same-time/680160
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=896266
But it would be nice if not all users would need to run through this hassle.
See Also: → 896266
Honestly, Nightly is an alpha version for advanced users and if you're an advanced user, you should know how to use the profile manager and add the commands "-p -no-remote" to the desktop shortcut to start Nightly while another Firefox instance is running. :)
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiple_profiles
I only run Nightly to verify bugs before reporting them here. Anyway, I consider myself a poweruser and I use Firefox and its dev edition 8h a day for development. Still:

1. In the first place, I did not know how to run Nightly at the same time as Stable. Googling showed me that I need to create another profile. So even if I knew how to create a Profile, it would not have helped me here immediately.

2. Then I did in fact know, how to create a profile, but still I would not know how to create a directly launchable Application link for it (I use Windows here, but am actually a Linux/Unity gui). Moreover, I still not know what "-no-remote" means (and why should I).

Last of all: Why make it complicated? Just do it like Firefox Developer Edition does...
no-remote is a command option to run multiple instances of Firefox (whatever the version) at the same time, so you can run a profile for your personal use, a profile for your work, a profile to test things with custom settings etc...

Moz apps have a powerful set of command options:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options

These commands can be used in a terminal or added to the path of a profile shortcut (on Windows eg).
Component: Untriaged → Startup and Profile System
Product: Firefox → Toolkit
(In reply to Loic from comment #1)
> Honestly, Nightly is an alpha version for advanced users and if you're an
> advanced user, you should know how to use the profile manager and add the
> commands "-p -no-remote" to the desktop shortcut to start Nightly while
> another Firefox instance is running. :)

If we are serious about getting more Nightly users -- as I am -- we should make it as easy as possible.
As triager, I don't like this idea to create a default profile for Aurora/Nightly, because I test many bug reports with these versions, and my profiles are fastly busted by pref changes and add-on install. So I have to delete them and create new ones to be sure Aurora/Nightly behave normally.

Ofc, I can admmit it's different for a web dev using Nightly.
(In reply to Loic from comment #5)
> As triager, I don't like this idea to create a default profile for
> Aurora/Nightly, because I test many bug reports with these versions, and my
> profiles are fastly busted by pref changes and add-on install. So I have to
> delete them and create new ones to be sure Aurora/Nightly behave normally.
> 
> Ofc, I can admmit it's different for a web dev using Nightly.

Using a default profile like we're doing now for Aurora won't affect your ability to do this.
You can always run Firefox with the '-p' option and manage the profiles as you want.
This seems like a legitimate and useful request for enhancement to me, changing status to New.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
similar discussion in bug 1255740, where (correctly IMO) it is still in question whether this is valid+wanted
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE

this is not resolved. I just installed nightly on windows and at the end of installer process if the checkbox to run is enabled (default), when I press finish it tells me firefox is already running.
nightly should automatically create the nightly profile even if regular firefox is running during nightly install.

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