127378 - Let end user choose between GLOBAL/USER installation destination

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Installer: XPInstall Engine, enhancement)

Description

[Matthew Cline]

Currently, when installing an XPI file, the installer can decide if the files
should be installed globally (MOZILLA_HOME) or for the user only (profile).
There should be some way that the end user can override the installer's prefence,
so that an app that would normally go into MOZILLA_HOME can go into the user's
profile instead (or visa versa).

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Not a mozilla bug. A generic mechanism for "global" vs "user" will never work,
because some things must be one or the other. Only the install script itself
knows. For example, language packs or skins work equally well in either place,
while plugins or true components can only be in the global places the app looks
for them.  One day Mozilla may support local plugins, and then install writers
could start writing installs to take advantage of that, but it's up to the script.

There's nothing stopping the script from asking the user. There's at least two
ways I can think of immediately: the most obvious would be using the confirm()
command in the script. You could also ask the user on the launching web site and
pass the answer into the script as an argument.
   http://blah/blah/foo.xpi?local=yes
given the above launching URL the script can get "local=yes" out of the
arguments property.

Comment 2

[Jimmy Lee]

Marking Verfied.

Comment 3

[Ervin Németh]

On a multi-user system the user may have no write-access to the system
installation directory.

This means all those shiny tools on http://www.mozdev.org/ can't be currently
installed by a non-privileged user on a UNIX system.

In my opinion an application should not know if it gets installed in a profile
or in the system directory.