1851567 - Startup static-preferrences in distribution.ini are ignored

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect, P3)

Description

[David Turner]

Steps to reproduce:

• Create /usr/share/firefox/distribution/distribution.ini
• Add the lines:

[Preferences]
gfx.text.disable-aa=true

• Restart Firefox

Actual results:

• Text anti-aliasing remains enabled
• If you look in about:config it will say that gfx.text.disable-aa is enabled, but it isn't actually taking effect
• The UI doesn't allow the user to set a preference to the same as its default, so the user now has no way to enable this preference

Expected results:

• All preferences in distribution.ini should act the same as if set manually by the user

Comment 1

[David Turner]

A few more things:

• This is probably related to Bug 1721764 and caused by distribution.ini preferences being loaded too late in startup
• gfx.text.disable-aa isn't actually the preference I care about, I'm just using it as an example because it's easy to demonstrate
• I believe this affects all preferences in modules/libpref/init/StaticPrefList.yaml with mirror: once
• Preferences files in /usr/lib/firefox/browser/defaults/preferences/*.js work correctly in this regard

Comment 2

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Settings UI' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[Jared Hirsch [:jhirsch] (he/him) (Needinfo please)]

Looking at bug 1721764, and bug 947838 mentioned there, it seems this is both a long-standing issue and, because it involves initialization timing, changing the init order could potentially create a number of bugs. Marking as lower priority accordingly; feel free to comment if you think this should be prioritized higher/sooner, thanks.

Comment 4

[David Turner]

Mike let me know that distribution.ini was the preferred way to set vendor preferences and that other methods may be removed in future. I don't know what the timescale of those changes would be, but they would be blocked if distribution.ini is unable to set many preferences. I'll let him decide how that translates into priority or whether other tickets need to depend on this one (it looks like he's away until the end of this month).

Comment 5

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

That's a bummer. I'd really like to be able to set some of these via distribution.ini.

I think what I would do here, then is set as much as possible in distribution.ini and put the rest in the .js file in /etc/firefox

Comment 6

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I think what I would do here, then is set as much as possible in distribution.ini and put the rest in the .js file in /etc/firefox

Does that work for you David?

Comment 7

[David Turner]

That's what I'm currently doing and it works fine as a workaround. The main thing is if /etc/firefox/prefs.js and/or /usr/lib/firefox/browser/distribution/preferences/*.js are ever deprecated or removed then this becomes much more important to fix.

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

That's what I'm currently doing and it works fine as a workaround. The main thing is if /etc/firefox/prefs.js and/or /usr/lib/firefox/browser/distribution/preferences/*.js are ever deprecated or removed then this becomes much more important to fix.

Definitely no plans to deprecate those any time soon.

Comment 9

[David Turner]

In that case I don't mind this being a wontfix, it's not causing me any real trouble.

Comment 10

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Unfortunately this is just a limitation of distribution.ini.