1322100 - FF50 can no longer select arbitrary application to open file with

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1299017

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Phil Evans]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0
Build ID: 20161114144739

Steps to reproduce:

Clicked to download a file (in this case, FITS format). Selected "Open with->Other->"View All Applications"


Actual results:

I was given an incomplete list of a set of applications that Firefox has arbitrarily decided are those which I can use.


Expected results:

I should have been given (as has been the case for the last 49 versions of Firefox) the option to browse or enter a path to an executable, so that I can open the file with something not in Firefox's stupid list of applications (in this case, the SAOImage ds9 application).

I don't know why Firefox has decided I now have to save the file and open it manually using the application of my choice, but if this problem is not fixed, I will be leaving Firefox: as a scientist (i.e. 99.9% of the software I use is bespoke software, not listed in the system apps but installed in /usr/local) I regularly download data off the web, often "quick-look" products I want to view briefly before deciding whether to download the whole gigabytes dataset. Firefox 50 forces me to do this in two steps instead of one.

Comment 1

[YF (Yang)]

Bug 1281959?

Comment 2

[Phil Evans]

(In reply to YF (Yang) from comment #1)
> Bug 1281959?

No - I don't think it's a duplicate of that for two reasons:

1) browser.download.forbid_open_with is set to false in my config.

2) That would completely disable open_with. My problem isn't that "open_with" is not available, it's that, since upgrading from FF49 to FF50, the "open with" option presents with a list of what Firefox thinks are appropriate apps, but there is no "Select something not on this list" or "Browse filesystem" type options.

I assume this is a deliberate change, in that the "open with" interface in FF50 is completely different to its old appearance, but I consider it a bug that there is no option to find an application not included in the default list.

Phil

Comment 3

[Loic]

Phil, could you run the tool mozregression to narrow down a regression range in FF50, please.
See http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/ for details.
Run the command "mozregression --good=49" then copy here the final pushlog from the repository mozilla-inbound.

Comment 4

[Phil Evans]

Hi Loic,
Trying this, it looks like the "problem" appeared pre-49: I guess the difference 49-50 is that 49 still remembers the "non-system" applications I've previously selected for certain file types, whereas FF50 doesn't (i.e. it's only 50, by losing my selected apps, that's caused me to find this bug). However, I've used the regression tool to narrow down the time that the "open with" dialogue lost the ability to select an arbitrary path, and the output is below:

6:21.15 INFO: Got as far as we can go bisecting nightlies...
 6:21.15 INFO: Last good revision: 8e5c888d0d89 (2015-07-22)
 6:21.15 INFO: First bad revision: 1f77b78797d6 (2015-07-23)
 6:21.15 INFO: Pushlog:
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=8e5c888d0d89&tochange=1f77b78797d6

 6:21.15 INFO: Switching bisection method to taskcluster
 6:21.15 INFO: Getting mozilla-central builds between 8e5c888d0d89 and 1f77b78797d6
Exception in thread Thread-104:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 801, in __bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 754, in run
    self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
(etc, i.e. mozregression crashed)


Still, I guess/hope the pushlog is enough to work out where the change came in (assuming you guys as professionals have better commit messages than the typical, "FINALLY got the damned thing to compile on GCC4 and GCC6" type messages that I tend to use....)

Thanks

Phil

Comment 5

[Loic]

As you are on Linux, it could be a regression after switch to Gtk3:
Mike Hommey — Bug 1186003 - Switch automated builds to Gtk+3. r=mshal 

Is it possible with Gtk2?

Comment 6

[Loic]

I mean to test without Gtk3.

Comment 7

[Phil Evans]

Errr, I'm not sure how. I have GTK2 and GTK3 packages installed, but I doubt I can remove the GTK3 stuff without breaking the rest of my installation. Is there a way I can force Firefox to use GTK2?

Comment 8

[Loic]

Karl, the user is on Linux, is it a possible known issue with Gtk3?

Comment 9

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

(In reply to Phil Evans from comment #7)
> Is there a way I can force Firefox to use GTK2?

No, it would require a rebuild, but there is no need for that.

(In reply to Phil Evans from comment #4)
> Hi Loic,
> Trying this, it looks like the "problem" appeared pre-49: 

This would be bug 1299017.

> I guess the
> difference 49-50 is that 49 still remembers the "non-system" applications
> I've previously selected for certain file types, whereas FF50 doesn't (i.e.
> it's only 50, by losing my selected apps, that's caused me to find this
> bug).

This sounds similar to bug 1263356, but that is winnt and existed prior to 49.
Best approach to investigate this is to file a separate bug and find a regression range for this.