1601806 - Remove "Please close Firefox" prompt at end of installation

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Installer, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

Currently, if any Firefox instance is already running at the end of an installation when we would normally launch the new instance, we refuse to do so and show a message box instead. This is because you couldn't previously run two different installations if they would be trying to use the same profile (there are exceptions for dev edition, which always had its own profile). But now that we have per-install profiles, that eliminates the reason for the prompt, leaving it as just an annoyance that should be removed.

Comment 1

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

Taking this now as a fix for the issue reported in bug 1600905 comment 13.

Comment 2

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

FYI, Romain, this change will cause us to no longer ever set the old_running column in the stub ping. The check for old instances couldn't detect any version released since March because of bug 1600905 and nobody noticed until last week when that was filed, so I'm guessing removing it isn't a problem.

Comment 3

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

Attachment: Bug 1601806 - Remove installer check for running instances before launching new instance. r=agashlin

At the end of any successful install, both the stub installer and full installer
(in interactive mode) attempt to launch the newly installed copy. But currently,
they first check if any copy of Firefox [1] is already running, and skip doing
that launch if so. The reason for this is that it used to be the case that no
two instances of Firefox could ever be running under default conditions because
there was only one default profile and it would be in use. It's clear that this
is the reason for the check because an exception is made for Developer Edition,
which had its own default profile and so wasn't subject to this restriction.

But now, we have per-install profiles by default, so there's no longer any need
to have this check, because launching the new instance won't be blocked by the
fact that there's already an instance running; all we're doing is creating
false positive prompts for something that isn't an issue anymore. So, this
patch removes the check and the prompt.

[1] At least that's the intent, but because of bug 1600905 we're actually now
checking for any Gecko-based product, because that's the best we can now do.

Comment 4

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Great catch Molly.
It also helps now identified new window launch events that fail because of other reasons and we see that we get about 10k daily installs that succeed whilst failing to open Firefox upon install termination (these always show old_running as true). Should I open a new bug to investigate this? https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/queries/67052/source#169823

Comment 5

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

Well, the old_running check as it was does work to detect versions prior to 67. And there's nothing else that causes that particular flag to be set except for this one check (which this bug removes). So the only way I know of for that to be happening is for those pings to have really seen those older versions running (perhaps hanging in the background, but running somehow).

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

There's a r+ patch which didn't land and no activity in this bug for 2 weeks.
:mhowell, could you have a look please?
For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 7

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

I intentionally delayed landing this because it got its r+ on the last day before I left for two weeks, and I wasn't going to land anything that day. I'm back today so I'll do it now.

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/98bc6434d1ae
Remove installer check for running instances before launching new instance. r=agashlin

Comment 9

[Noemi Erli[:noemi_erli]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/98bc6434d1ae

Comment 10

[Cornel Ionce [:noni] [Hubs QA]]

Confirming this issue as fixed using the installer of 74.0b4, build ID 20200216164042.
The "Please close Firefox" prompt at end of installation is no longer displayed.