1324790 - prevent Firefox nightly/aurora from running on XP/Vista

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

Despite update checks, some users are continuing to download Nightly and install it via the zips that we package up: see bug 1324183 comment 17 for an example.

We should change this so that firefox.exe displays an error message on startup if running on a XP/Vista system, similar to the work we did to display errors if Firefox was started on a non-SSE2 Linux system.

Comment 1

[Masatoshi Kimura [:emk]]

Bug 1322646 will fix this.
We don't have to add message resource and code for unsupported platforms. The system error message is enough.

Comment 2

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

(In reply to Masatoshi Kimura [:emk] from comment #1)
> Bug 1322646 will fix this.
> We don't have to add message resource and code for unsupported platforms.
> The system error message is enough.

Masatoshi, do you know how soon bug 1322646 might land? If it will be longer than a few weeks, should we add our own XP/Vista warning message in the meantime? I feel we should probably just close this bug as a duplicate of bug 1322646.

Comment 3

[Masatoshi Kimura [:emk]]

(In reply to Chris Peterson [:cpeterson] from comment #2)
> Masatoshi, do you know how soon bug 1322646 might land? If it will be longer
> than a few weeks, should we add our own XP/Vista warning message in the
> meantime? I feel we should probably just close this bug as a duplicate of
> bug 1322646.

The module owner decision has already been made (see bug 1322646 comment #14). The patch is really simple. I don't imagine review takes so long time. In case :glandium is too busy, I'll seek another reviewer.

Comment 4

[mirh]

An additional check/warning just to prevent even power users (call them masochists if you want) really doesn't seem the "style" I'd expect from such an open project. 

I mean, if it's to lessen burden on the codebase or improve functionality it's a [good] thing (for as much: see my remarks in bug 1324183), but putting a hardblock and call it "service to users" really seem the microsoft way to do business.

Comment 5

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Fixed by bumping the Windows subsystem version in bug 1322646.

(In reply to mirh from comment #4)
> An additional check/warning just to prevent even power users (call them
> masochists if you want) really doesn't seem the "style" I'd expect from such
> an open project. 

I see what you mean. The motivation for a version check is primarily to avoid user confusion or frustration when Firefox features stop working (like Vista video in bug 1324183).