242296 - mozilla/mozilla-firefox/mozilla-thunderbird -remote "xfeDoCommand (openBrowser)" conflicts

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 237283

(Core Graveyard :: Cmd-line Features, defect)

Description

[Mitchell Keith Bloch]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040207 Firefox/0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040207 Firefox/0.8

If one attempts to open more than one mozilla-based application at once and then
to use the -remote function, big problems arise.  It affects mozilla, firefox,
thunderbird, and netscape (although you can't use -remote from netscape itself
for other reasons of which I am unaware).

It seems that the "-remote" functionality of mozilla has no good way of
distinguishing between different mozilla-based applications when they are
running.  If thunderbird is open, and you try to open new windows in any of the
browsers by remote, the command fails with the ERRMSG popup (described in the
actual results), and in firefox even when opened for the first time (not by
remote).  Also, when multiple browsers are opened, the remote for any of them
will affect the most recently opened browser.  Even netscape is affected despite
its inability to use "-remote" itself.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1) Open thunderbird and mozilla (in any order)
2) 'mozilla -remote "xfeDoCommand (openBrowser)"'
3) The ERRMSG should popup

1) Open thunderbird
2) Open firefox
3) The ERRMSG should popup

1) Open firebird
2) Open thunderbird
3) 'mozilla-firefox -remote "xfeDoCommand (openBrowser)"'
4) The ERRMSG should popup

1) Open mozilla
2) Open firefox
3) 'mozilla -remote "xfeDoCommand (openBrowser)"'
4) You get a new firefox window

1) Open firefox
2) Open mozilla
3) 'firefox -remote "xfeDoCommand (openBrowser)"'
4) You get a new mozilla window

1) Open firefox
2) Open netscape
3) 'mozilla-firefox -remote "xfeDoCommand (openBrowser)"'
4) You get a new netscape window
Actual Results:  
The ERRMSG popup (as I have decided to call it) states:

Error launching browser window:TypeError:
Component.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/component/browser/instance;1'] has no
properties

Expected Results:  
Thunderbird shouldn't prevent the -remote from opening browser windows (or
firefox from opening any windows at all).
Browser -remotes shouldn't get confused between different browsers.

Comment 1

[Mitchell Keith Bloch]

actually, I would like to correct case 2:
1) Open thunderbird
2) Open firefox
3) The ERRMSG should popup

This is not the case.  This works fine.  This was my mistake.  However, all
cases involving -remote work as stated earlier.

Comment 2

[Mitchell Keith Bloch]

Also, treat mozilla-firefox simply as firefox - it is simply a bad alias that
was set up on my computer and part of what caused my confusion in case 2.

Comment 3

[Andrew Schultz]

dupe of "make x-remote aware of profiles, specific programs and usersnames"

depending on what you had running, bug 226071 might have also been part of the
problem.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 237283 ***