1896021 - `New private window` opens new Firefox instance (new profile) when using a temporary profile.

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect, P3)

Description

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

STR:

1. Run Firefox via ./mach run
2. Right click the taskbar icon and select "New private window"

Expected result:
A new private window is open for the existing Firefox instance.

Observed result:
The profile selector is opened.

Comment 1

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

Also occurs when running ./firefox.exe -profile $(TopObjDir)\tmp\profile-default -wait-for-browser.
Doesn't occur when running ./mach run -r -n (which opens a non-temporary profile).

I suspect this relates to the temporary profile not being registered in a normal fashion.

Comment 2

[Tim Huang[:timhuang]]

Dave, I think this is related to the profile chooser. Could you take a look?

Comment 3

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I cannot reproduce the results from comment 0 precisely. Nick, do you have "Use the selected profile without asking at startup" unchecked in the profile selector? That would be the missing piece.

Ultimately the problem with the menu items in the jump list is that they work by telling Windows to call a Firefox command line when clicked. But the command line doesn't specify a profile to use so they will always attempt to use the default profile, even if that isn't the currently running profile. That is probably the right choice is Firefox isn't already running. But not ideal if Firefox is currently open because you'll click an item and it will open a window in a different profile, or possibly go wrong in other ways.

Comment 4

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I should add that this problem will get somewhat better with the new profile system

Comment 5

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #3)

I cannot reproduce the results from comment 0 precisely. Nick, do you have "Use the selected profile without asking at startup" unchecked in the profile selector? That would be the missing piece.

Yep, "Use the selected profile without asking at startup" is unchecked.

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

There aren't great options for solving this. The "easiest" would be to on app startup (or any time a different instance of the application gains focus) re-populate the jump list with links including the correct profile path and then on shut down reset the list to use the default profile.

The harder option would be to add some new command line argument that when seen instead of using the default profile first attempts to find the most recently used Firefox instance still running and hand off to that. That has some utility beyond this bug but it's also non-trivial to slot in to our current startup code.