1494326 - Provide a mach run option to launch the browser using the macOS open(1) command

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Build System :: Mach Core, enhancement)

Description

[Haik Aftandilian [:haik]]

macOS includes the open(1) command which can be used to launch an application from the command line as if it was launched via the Finder. i.e., the application is spawned directly by the launchd process instead of via the shell parent process chain.

One use I've found for this relates to the new macOS 10.14 Mojave device permission dialogs for the camera/mic. When launched via "mach run", the dialog is displayed as '"Terminal" would like to access the camera." (I consider that a macOS limitation and not a Firefox bug.) When launching with the open command, the dialog is displayed correctly.

I don't know of other uses at this time and understand if this is considered too low value to be worth integrating.

Launching with the open command can be done manually with the following command depending on $OBJ_DIR and $REPO_DIR.

  $ open ${OBJ_DIR}/dist/Nightly.app --args -no-remote -foreground -profile ${REPO_DIR}/obj-opt.noindex/tmp/profile-default

Comment 1

[Haik Aftandilian [:haik]]

Attachment: Bug 1494326 - Provide a mach run option to launch the browser using the macOS open(1) command r=nfroyd

Comment 2

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Would it be harmful to make this the default behavior for `mach run` on macOS when you're not using `--debug` or anything like that? Does the change in parent process make it hard to wait for the browser to exit and handle its stdout?

Comment 3

[Andrew Halberstadt [:ahal]]

While only tangentially build related, I don't have strong opinions on this so I'm punting this over to the build review queue.

I do echo ted's sentiment though. It doesn't seem something worth creating a command line flag for (why not just do the best thing for the given scenario?) There's also the ~/.mozbuild/machrc config file which can be used to set this either instead of or in addition to the cli.

Comment 4

[Haik Aftandilian [:haik]]

(In reply to Ted Mielczarek [:ted] [:ted.mielczarek] from comment #2)
> Would it be harmful to make this the default behavior for `mach run` on
> macOS when you're not using `--debug` or anything like that? Does the change
> in parent process make it hard to wait for the browser to exit and handle
> its stdout?

Yes, it does it make it more difficult to handle the browser's stdout. stdout/stderr is not sent to the terminal when opened with the open command.

I would prefer it not be the default because I think having stdout/stderr is useful for debugging and most of the time want to see that.

Comment 5

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

Comment on attachment 9012182 [details]
Bug 1494326 - Provide a mach run option to launch the browser using the macOS open(1) command r=nfroyd

Nathan Froyd [:froydnj] has approved the revision.

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/6617886468a2
Provide a mach run option to launch the browser using the macOS open(1) command r=froydnj

Comment 7

[Cristian Brindusan [:cbrindusan]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6617886468a2