299149 - On first launch from a tree, files in browser/locales are overwritten

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

After first lauch of ff from my tree, i get these changes
http://mano.fastmail.fm/browser_locales.diff
into the tree itself.

This is a recent regression (~month, i think).

Comment 1

[jhp (no longer active)]

I can confirm seeing something similar, although I can't reproduce it right now.

Comment 2

[Benjamin Smedberg]

What does your profile/mimetypes.rdf look like? Is it symlinked somewhere, or
hardlinked?

Comment 3

[jhp (no longer active)]

Well, the three files in Mano's patch are all symlinked in
dist/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/defaults/profile to the originial source file. 
I just tried creating a new profile, and it properly copies the files (such that
there are no symlinks in the profile directory).  The only thing I can think of
is that at some point this was broken and it was symlinking files within the
profile.

Comment 4

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

linked to browser/locales/en-US/profile/mac/mimeTypes.rdf

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I understand that dist/DeerPark.app/Content/MacOS/defaults/profile/mimeTypes.rdf
is symlinked into the source tree: that behavior is by design.

The bad part is having either of those things linked to the profile at all.

Comment 6

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

FYI, I get the same results with a new profile created by the same build.

Comment 7

[Chris Beard]

closing down for 1.8b3, let's try and get this in for 1.8b4.

Comment 8

[Chris Beard]

closing down for 1.8b3, let's try and get this in for 1.8b4. 

Comment 9

[Mark Mentovai]

I guess this doesn't happen on other platforms?

Comment 10

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> I guess this doesn't happen on other platforms?

Right: everybody else can run directly from their obj dir, Mac needs to make -C browser/installer and then run from the .dmg to keep from messing up the source dir.

Comment 11

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I had a profile that got these symlinks, and then when I removed the tree, I ran into problems.  Specifically, I couldn't add any bookmarks.

see bug #354245.

lrwxrwxrwx    1 sspitzer  sspitzer       85 Jun 15 15:43 localstore.rdf ->
/Users/sspitzer/Desktop/bonecho2/mozilla/browser/locales/en-US/profile/localstore.rdf
lrwxrwxrwx    1 sspitzer  sspitzer       88 Jun 15 15:43 mimeTypes.rdf ->
/Users/sspitzer/Desktop/bonecho2/mozilla/browser/locales/en-US/profile/mac/mimeTypes.rdf
-rw-r--r--    1 sspitzer  sspitzer    26946 Sep 25 19:38 prefs.js
lrwxrwxrwx    1 sspitzer  sspitzer       81 Jun 15 15:43 search.rdf ->
/Users/sspitzer/Desktop/bonecho2/mozilla/browser/locales/en-US/profile/search.rdf

Comment 12

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

FWIW, the workaround is to create the profile from a release build (or another tree).

Comment 13

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Attachment: don't symlink, but instead cp in the profile stuff

use SYSINSTALL instead of INSTALL, per bsmedberg's suggestion, to copy the profile files in to the install dir instead of symlinking.  The (much harder) real fix is to have the profile instantiation goop dereference symlinks.

Comment 14

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Checked in.