1401946 - Show profile path in about:support

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Henri Kemppainen]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Build ID: 20170914024831

Steps to reproduce:

Go to about:support.  Look for profile directory.


Actual results:

Instead of showing profile directory, a button to maybe open the profile is shown.


Expected results:

Show the path to the profile directory, perhaps in addition to the button.

Comment 1

[Henri Kemppainen]

Rationale: I rarely want to "open" the profile directory.  Chances are that I already have it in open somewhere, or I need to copy the path into a command line, but I don't know the path.

It's also worth pointing out that the open button might just not do anything, depending on the system configuration:

** (firefox:28760): WARNING **: Cannot launch default application: No application is registered as handling this file
JavaScript error: chrome://global/content/aboutSupport.js, line 1142: NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIFile.reveal]

(See also android bug 703298)

Comment 2

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

You can get this information in about:profiles

Comment 3

[Henri Kemppainen]

(In reply to Pascal Chevrel:pascalc from comment #2)
> You can get this information in about:profiles

Not really, that only shows profiles under ~/.mozilla/firefox/.  Start the browser with |mach run| or pass -profile manually and you'll end up running a profile that will not show up in about:profiles.

Comment 4

[Henri Kemppainen]

Attachment: aboutsupport-show-profile-path.patch

Hi mossop, can you review or flag the right person?

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Comment on attachment 8910737 [details] [diff] [review]
aboutsupport-show-profile-path.patch

Review of attachment 8910737 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I think to keep this looking consistent we should instead turn the button into something that looks like a link showing the profile folder path that when clicked attempts to open it.

Comment 6

[Henri Kemppainen]

> I think to keep this looking consistent we should instead turn the button
> into something that looks like a link showing the profile folder path that
> when clicked attempts to open it.

As another consistency consideration, I would expect things that look like links not to try open some external program.  So I would make it a file:// url (the user.js link is also file://).  This could also be useful on systems where no external program is configured to open directories.  However, this might break workflows, as firefox doesn't really enable file management from within.  What do you think?

I'll note that changing the button into a link will invalidate some documentation, e.g.:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-troubleshooting-information-page-fix-firefox#w_application-basics
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data#w_how-do-i-find-my-profile

Is that okay?

Comment 7

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Sorry for the delay, I've been mulling this over and flip-flopping between which is the right course of action. I think in retrospect I was wrong to request this be made a link because as you say that implies certain things to the user and I don't think we want to switch to only opening the profile folder in the browser. So let's keep this as a button.

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/b5da04ce9e43
Show profile path next to the open button. r=Mossop

Comment 9

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b5da04ce9e43