291882 - Make nsXREDirProvider handle unknown CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect, P1)

Description

[Darin Fisher]

Make nsXREDirProvider handle unknown CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA

This may be something we need to worry about on older Windows systems.  Use of
CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA was introduced by the patch for bug 291033.

This bug may cause Firefox not to start on some Windows systems.

Comment 1

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

I'm not sure this is a problem. Wouldn't the windows call just fail, and
necko/fastload (the only users of this) can fallback to the profile directory
anyway?

Comment 2

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I guess this is why I figured that PROFILE_LOCAL_DIR could be null. hrm...

Comment 3

[Jean-Marc Desperrier]

In case, the fallback is not implemented at the moment :

Info for the required version can be found here :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/reference/enums/csidl.asp

CSIDL_APPDATA (0x001a)    Version 4.71
CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA (0x001c)    Version 5.0.

And here is the page that document what system will have which version :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/versions.asp

IE 5 required, but :
"Internet Explorer 5 does not update the Shell, so version 5.0 of Shell32.dll
will not be found on Windows NT, Windows 95, or Windows 98 systems. Version 5.0
of Shell32.dll will be distributed with Windows 2000 and Windows Me"

And :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/reference/functions/shgetspecialfolderlocation.asp
says that SHGetSpecialFolderLocation comes from shell32.lib

To be tested, but it sounds like 95/98/NT will be concerned even with IE 5
installed.

Comment 4

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Also, note that not even CSIDL_APPDATA is supported on all our platforms. At
least on original Win95, we use %WINDIR%\Mozilla. see 
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/toolkit/xre/nsXREDirProvider.cpp#719
and/or
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/xpcom/io/nsAppFileLocationProvider.cpp#374

Comment 5

[Darin Fisher]

Yes, it is important that GetUserDataDirectory not fail.  It should handle the
failover.  It currently does, but I'm not sure that failover from
CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA to C:\Windows is better than failover from
CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA to CSIDL_APPDATA.  It would seem that there are some
versions of Windows where the CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA location is not defined but
CSIDL_APPDATA is, so in those cases it would probably be odd to store the Cache
in C:\Windows.

Comment 6

[Caleb]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Yes, it is important that GetUserDataDirectory not fail.  It should handle the
> failover.  It currently does, but I'm not sure that failover from
> CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA to C:\Windows is better than failover from
> CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA to CSIDL_APPDATA.  It would seem that there are some
> versions of Windows where the CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA location is not defined but
> CSIDL_APPDATA is, so in those cases it would probably be odd to store the Cache
> in C:\Windows.

On Windows 9x IE stores its cache in C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files.

AFAIK Win 9x also has an APPDATA folder, not sure whether this is by default (or
whether it is defined anywhere) or explicitly created by applications, but last
time I used Win 9x (long time ago), I think it was C:\Windows\Application Data.

Comment 7

[Darin Fisher]

Attachment: v1 patch

This should do the trick.

Comment 8

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

> AFAIK Win 9x also has an APPDATA folder

for some versions of "x"

Comment 9

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 181937 [details] [diff] [review]
v1 patch

I'd like to see this included for Firefox 1.1a, as without it we may cause some
problems for Win9x users.

Comment 10

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 181937 [details] [diff] [review]
v1 patch

a=asa

Comment 11

[Darin Fisher]

fixed-on-trunk

Comment 12

[Jean-Marc Desperrier]

One note : in the implementation linked to this we carefully avoid using
SHGetFolderPath and use SHGetSpecialFolderLocation instead to not have a
dependance on SHFolder.dll that comes with system that have IE 5 or later
(SHGetFolderPath is implemented in shell32.dll in W2000/Me and upward, software
linked to SHFolder.dll will be transparently redirected).

But SHFolder.dll is a redistributable that we can get here :
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6ae02498-07e9-48f1-a5d6-dbfa18d37e0f&DisplayLang=en

and by using that we'd be sure we get SHGetFolderPath with a minimum the
5.50.4027.300 level of implementation on any system from w95 upward.

Comment 13

[Darin Fisher]

I'd just rather not increase our download size with a redistributable DLL like
this if it can be helped.