198138 - Alias to bookmark file gets replaced by copy of target bookmark file

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Greg Welch]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030318
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030318

On OS X, if you replace the bookmarks.html file with a soft link (ln -s) or an
alias to the actual file, that soft link/alias gets replaced by a copy of
link/alias target file when Mozilla writes the bookmark file.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Make sure Mozilla is NOT running
2. cd ~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/default/gxmaee47.slt/ (or whatever the default
profile dir is called)
3. mv bookmarks.html ~/Desktop/
4. ln -s ~/Desktop/bookmarks.html .
5. ls -la (confirm that bookmarks.html is a soft link to the file on the Desktop)
6. Launch Mozilla (using the Finder or whatever)
7. Quit Mozilla
8. ls -la (confirm that bookmarks.html is NO LONGER a soft link to the file on
the Desktop, it is a complete file, a COPY of the file on the Desktop)

Actual Results:  
After starting and quitting Mozilla
~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/default/gxmaee47.slt/bookmarks.html appeared to be a
normal/complete html file.

Expected Results:  
I would have expected
~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/default/gxmaee47.slt/bookmarks.html to remain a SOFT
LINK to the original file, as it was BEFORE I started/quit Mozilla.

I actually noticed this first w/ the latest build of Camino (with the file
bookmarks.xml), but then I tried a similar thing with the latest Mozilla build
and it exhibited the same behavior (replaced the soft link w/ a copy of the file).

Comment 1

[Greg Welch]

Sorry, in order to see the problem you might need to add a bookmark after my
step 6, to cause Mozilla to update/write the bookmark file. (Camino apparently
writes the bookmarks file when you start/quit it, even if you did not change the
bookmarks.)

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

there is some discussion in bug 156814 as to whether it's really fixed or not

Comment 3

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Whether or not this is actually a problem, it will be fixed by my patch in bug
191783.

Comment 4

[Greg K.]

G. Welch, can you confirm that this is now fixed since bug 191783 is fixed?

Comment 5

[Greg Welch]

I attempted to test this with the 2003040203 build.

It appears to me that it works as expected if you make a bookmark file alias
using a unix soft link (ln -s), but that it does NOT work if you use the
Finder's alias interface (Command+Option-drag). When I use the latter, Mozilla
opens with no bookmarks; as long as it is running the file continues to look
like an alias; as soon as I quit the alias is replaced by an empty (default I
guess?) bookmarks file.

Comment 6

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I'm not a mac-guy, so I don't know what a finder alias looks like and whether
it's easy to support. cc'ing sfraser for his input on mac-stuff. If the second
problem is a bug, it's probably in the macOSX implementation of nsILocalFile.

Comment 7

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

It looks like symlinked bookmark files were broken XP in bug 200498.  I've filed
bug 225055 on that.  Once that's fixed, we should retest the Mac-only issues
here, if any.

Comment 8

[Henrik Lynggaard Hansen]

Im confirming this bug, but I'm not sure it is should be duped againt bu 225055

suggest blocking 1.7a for this. 

Comment 9

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This is *not* a dup of 225055, although it is related. Bug 225055 is about
symlinks, this bug is about aliases. The situation is similar, but the fix is
probably different.

Comment 10

[[e-mail]]

bsmedberg, does the fix for bug 252050 cover this? (we use
nsILocalFile::SetFollowLinks() and nsIFile::Normalize() there. are those
sufficient?)

please reso/fix this bug, by proxy of bug 252050 and bug 252193, if the behavior
is correct in builds after this date.

Comment 11

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 12

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but still has no comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project 5 years ago.

Because of this, we're resolving the bug as EXPIRED.

If you still can reproduce the bug on SeaMonkey 2 or otherwise think it's still valid, please REOPEN it and if it is a platform or toolkit issue, move it to the according component.

Query tag for this change: EXPIRED-20100420