1818237 - Make it possible to import from other browsers when Firefox is installed as a Snap package

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Migration, enhancement)

Description

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Spinning this out from bug 1467094. Bug 1467094 focused itself by making it possible to find and import from Chromium when Chromium is installed as a Snap package, but Firefox is not.

When Firefox is installed as a Snap package, the permissions that it has to access the file system changes greatly. As a sandboxed application, it no longer has direct read access to the user's home directory to pull in things like history, bookmarks or passwords from other browsers.

We can, however, stat files to detect the presence of other browsers, and then use the native file picker to get temporary read access to those files. This is what we do for Safari. This bug is about using that same technique here when Firefox is installed as a Snap package.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

It's worth noting that our first-run experience does have some dialogs that actively encourage users to try importing data from other browsers -- I just encountered these in the Snap version of Firefox, and clicked through, only to find that it couldn't find any other browsers (when I do in fact have Chrome installed, which a non-snap firefox build is able to find).

It's obviously not-great to be pushing users towards trying something that doesn't work, so if this ends up being something that we can't fix in the near term, we might consider suppressing any data-importation call-to-action dialogs for snappified Firefox, as a temporary mitigation to avoid causing user confusion/bother.

Comment 3

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

We're unblocked here. We're using the feature detection from bug 1852839 to do a runtime determination if we can get access to the data with the native file picker, and if so, offer the user instructions on how to do that.

Comment 4

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Bug 1818237 - Make it possible to request permission to access Chrome-browser profiles. r?mstriemer!

This is needed for Ubuntu Linux when Firefox is installed as a Snap package.
Under those conditions, Firefox doesn't have the ability to read the contents
of the other browsers' data directories.

We work around by showing the user a native file picker and instructing them
to browse to that data directory in folder picker mode - doing so tends to give
the Firefox process access to the folder.

Comment 5

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Bug 1818237 - Expose whether or not the browser is installed as a Snap package through nsIGIOService. r?Gijs!

The front-end needs to know sometimes when the browser is installed as a Snap
in order to know what strategies it should use to gain read permissions on
other browsers data during browser migration.

Comment 6

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Bug 1818237 - MockFilePicker should be able to return the nsIFile for a selected directory. r?baku!

Depends on D189840

Comment 7

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Attachment: Bug 1818237 - Add automated tests for requesting migrator permissions. r?mstriemer!

Depends on D188874

Comment 8

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

I'm going to land the nsIGIOService part now, as that'll mean that folks applying the other patches won't require full binary builds to test them out after the first part merges.

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b69fa06f2cc5
Expose whether or not the browser is installed as a Snap package through nsIGIOService. r=Gijs

Comment 10

[Norisz Fay [:noriszfay]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b69fa06f2cc5

Comment 11

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/f9fc3ecfa2a7
MockFilePicker should be able to return the nsIFile for a selected directory. r=Gijs

Comment 12

[Sandor Molnar[:smolnar]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f9fc3ecfa2a7

Comment 13

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/477292e081b3
Make it possible to request permission to access Chrome-browser profiles. r=mstriemer,fluent-reviewers,desktop-theme-reviewers
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/a8584f57dc7c
Add automated tests for requesting migrator permissions. r=mstriemer

Comment 14

[Sandor Molnar[:smolnar]]

Backed out for causing mochitest/xpc failures on browser/components/migration/tests/browser/browser_safari_permissions.js / browser/components/migration/tests/unit/test_Chrome_passwords_emptySource.js

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/f12f713898e7357b91adbc42f64690b5701d10ec

Push with failures

Failure log mochitest -> TEST-UNEXPECTED-FAIL | browser/components/migration/tests/browser/browser_safari_permissions.js | Test timed out -

Failure log xpc -> TEST-UNEXPECTED-FAIL | browser/components/migration/tests/unit/test_Chrome_passwords_emptySource.js | test_importEmptyDBWithoutAuthPrompts - [test_importEmptyDBWithoutAuthPrompts : 20]

Comment 15

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/87f67f05c8a8
Make it possible to request permission to access Chrome-browser profiles. r=mstriemer,fluent-reviewers,desktop-theme-reviewers
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/e5d78a9ddcb4
Add automated tests for requesting migrator permissions. r=mstriemer

Comment 16

[Sandor Molnar[:smolnar]]

Backed out for causing xpc failures on browser/components/migration/tests/unit/test_Chrome_permissions.js

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b2becf3e4cd5c851c8bac5f040cfcc0a1baeea97

Push with failures

Failure log -> PROCESS-CRASH | MOZ_RELEASE_ASSERT(!aPath.Contains(u'/')) (Windows paths cannot include forward slashes) [@ mozilla::dom::PathUtils::InitFileWithPath]

Comment 17

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/0da2d5295ccf
Make it possible to request permission to access Chrome-browser profiles. r=mstriemer,fluent-reviewers,desktop-theme-reviewers
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/2b8519877767
Add automated tests for requesting migrator permissions. r=mstriemer

Comment 18

[Norisz Fay [:noriszfay]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0da2d5295ccf
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/2b8519877767

Comment 19

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Release Note Request (optional, but appreciated)
[Why is this notable]:

Users on Ubuntu Linux that install Firefox as a Snap package have historically been unable to import from other installed browsers. This patch makes it possible to import from Chromium when Firefox and Chromium are both installed as Snap packages.

[Affects Firefox for Android]:

No.

[Suggested wording]:

Users on Ubuntu Linux now have the ability to import from Chromium when both are installed as Snap packages.

[Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]:

None.

Comment 20

[Dianna Smith [:diannaS]]

Added to 120 nightly release notes: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/120.0a1/releasenotes/