279194 - Cannot open URL from other applications if FF not running

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[philippe (part-time)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b) Gecko/20050120 Firefox/1.0+ (PowerBook)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b) Gecko/20050120 Firefox/1.0+ (PowerBook)

Didn't find any bugs directly about this, nor mentioned in the forums, although
the problem has been mentioned.
Since 20050118 build, FF can't open URL from other applications, clicking a link
in the email client (Mail.app) in my case) brings the browser to the front, but
does not bring up the page requested. Since 0119, it simply freezes the browser.
Same problems from NetNewsWire (RSS).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.click link in email message
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
browser is brought forward, but url is not followed. The browser freeze,
requiring a force quit.

Expected Results:  
Open the requested page in a new tab, in the same window (as per my
preferences). This worked fine 'till 20050117.

Comment 1

[OstGote!]

Looks like the regression Bug 279164. Duplicate?

Comment 2

[philippe (part-time)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Looks like the regression Bug 279164. Duplicate?

Ah, that's the one I missed. Same problem, same timeframe. Good to see that's fixed.

Comment 3

[OstGote!]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 279164 ***

Comment 4

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

actually, will reopen this since this is still an issue on Mac.

Comment 5

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

from bug 179164 comment 15:

(OS X 10.3.7)
Checking Console.app, I see this:
Warning: unrecognized command line flag -psn_0_20578305

FireFox JS Console only gives this:
Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x8000ffff
(NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED) [nsIPrefBranch.getCharPref]"  nsresult: "0x8000ffff
(NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)"  location: "JS frame ::
file:///Applications/firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/components/nsDefaultCLH.js ::
clh_handle :: line 81"  data: no]
Source File:
file:///Applications/firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/components/nsDefaultCLH.js
Line: 81

Comment 6

[Benjamin Smedberg]

The JS exception is expected and harmless. The "unrecognized flag" error is more
interesting, but I believe it occurs during startup and doesn't affect the
problem at hand.

Comment 7

[Tom Hessman]

On the 2005-01-22 trunk build, I don't see the freeze (although I did a few days
ago).  But if I click a link in Thunderbird (or any other application) while
Firefox is running, it gains focus but doesn't load the page.  If Firefox is not
running, it starts, but loads the homepage instead of the specified URL.

I also see entries like "Warning: unrecognized command line flag -psn_0_7995393"
in Console.app, but the numbers are different each time.  They appear whenever
Firefox starts, regardless of if I click a link in an application or if I start
it myself from the dock.

Comment 8

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Can someone breakpoint nsCommandLine::Init (you will probably need to hardcode
NS_BREAK and compile, or something equally weird) and tell me what the stack
looks like when you open the link from tbird?

Comment 9

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Attachment: actually initialize the mac command-line appleevents code

Comment 10

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Just tested, this patch does fix it (and the dock actions issue), thanks!

Comment 11

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Comment on attachment 172445 [details] [diff] [review]
actually initialize the mac command-line appleevents code

Looks OK. Any reason for moving the nsCommandLineServiceMac files?

Comment 12

[Benjamin Smedberg]

It's just a question of which .dylib they get linked to.

Comment 13

[José Jeria]

*** Bug 279912 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Fixed on trunk.

Comment 15

[Wladimir Labeikovsky]

*** Bug 279969 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[Arnaud Boudou]

This bug seems to be partialy fixed :
 - if Firefox is started, URL are opened
 - if Firefox is not started, clicking on an url start Firefox which close
immediatly, without error message.

Comment 17

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

This second issue is because Firefox does the bizarre launch-quit-relaunch thing.

Comment 18

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Oooh, fun.

Comment 19

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Attachment: Move appleevents startup after app-restart

Darin, this is a little bit odd, but it seems to work better than initializing
early and the restarting (since restartargv doesn't track changes to gArgv).

Comment 20

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Can't we fix the stupid quit/relaunch thing on Mac? It's so odd to see the dock
icon appear, disappear, then appear agaain. It looks like the app has crashed
and relaunchd.

Comment 21

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 172602 [details] [diff] [review]
Move appleevents startup after app-restart

r=darin

Comment 22

[Darin Fisher]

(In reply to comment #20)
> Can't we fix the stupid quit/relaunch thing on Mac? It's so odd to see the dock
> icon appear, disappear, then appear agaain. It looks like the app has crashed
> and relaunchd.

simon: i wish, but it's a challenging problem since xpcom components may need to
be unloaded in the process, etc.  we don't support unloading C++ components
right now.  aside from that we also have to worry about global variables being
re-initialized properly across the entire system.  the codebase grew up with the
assumption that XPCOM is initialized only once per process.

Comment 23

[Arnaud Boudou]

It seems now to be OK with this build : Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X
Mach-O; fr-FR; rv:1.8b) Gecko/20050128 Firefox/1.0+ 

Comment 24

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Oh yeah, I checked in the second patch yesterday.

Comment 25

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Using Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b)
Gecko/20050128 Firefox/1.0+ it does work for the most part, but there is a minor
wrinkle - if I start from a fresh profile and click on a link in Thunderbird, FF
launches with the start page - the link that I clicked on doesn't appear. I
guess that is expected behavior with a fresh profile?