260917 - Command line option "-profile" should respect profile name before handling as relative / absolute path

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Trying to start Firefox (Thunderbird should be also affected) with a selected
profile from an external program doesn't start the application when the profile
name is given. You have to set the relative or absolute path of that profile to
be able to start Firefox.

Following code won't work:

  std::string param = "-profile \"Test User\"";
  std::string app = "c:\\programme\\mozilla\\firefox\\firefox.exe";

  ShellExecute(NULL, "open", app.c_str(), param.c_str(), NULL, SW_SHOW);

If you exchange the content of the parameter with the real path like "-profile
\"x:\\firefox\"" it will launch Firefox.

The command line option "-profile" should look for an available profile with the
 given name. If none is listed in profiles.ini the paramter could be handled as
a relative or absolute path. So we are still able to carry profiles on USB
drives with changing drive letters.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

You are thinking of the "-P" option, whinch takes a profile name. The -profile
option takes a path by design.

Comment 2

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Benjamin, shouldn't these both arguments be exchanged? Theoretical, when i want
to start with a selected profile I expect to use it's assigned name and not the
path. So "-profile" would be the best option for that. In contrast "-p" could
stand for everything including 'path'. IMO this is actually not the best solution.

Comment 3

[Benjamin Smedberg]

History always trumps theory, we have used -p <name> since NS4.x, and I
introduced -profile <path> before 0.9.

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

So just a question to your 'profile' option. Why this was named 'profile'? I
don't select any created profile. What i do is selecting a path where a profile
probably could exists. That's irritating not only me. Wouldn't be '-profilepath'
a better solution? It's a little bit longer but does what it means.