325591 - Renaming firefox.exe causes 1.5.0.1 partial patch to fail

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[grzesiak]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

Due to "policy restrictions," any executable on my system named "firefox.exe" is blocked. Moving firefox.exe to another filename allows proper execution. Because the partial patch procedure searches explicitly for "firefox.exe" and not the name of the executable that is currently running, it fails on my system. See output of updates/last-update.log below.

Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have Mozilla 1.5 installed.
2. Rename firefox.exe to something else (eg: firefoxx.exe)
3. Run partial patch procedure.

Actual Results:  
The partial patch fails and suggests a full-download upgrade.

Expected Results:  
The software should have checked the name of the currently-running executable and should have patched that, rather than blindly trying to patch "firefox.exe"

updates/last-update.log:
PREPARE PATCH browserconfig.properties
PREPARE PATCH xpicleanup.exe
PREPARE ADD softokn3.chk
PREPARE PATCH js3250.dll
PREPARE PATCH nspr4.dll
PREPARE PATCH softokn3.dll
PREPARE PATCH plds4.dll
PREPARE PATCH firefox.exe
failed: 6
calling QuitProgressUI

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

We're patching software here, you can't make random modifications and expect patching to work.

Comment 2

[grzesiak]

(In reply to comment #1)
> We're patching software here, you can't make random modifications and expect
> patching to work.
> 

I completely understand. The software didn't act as I expected it should, saw that a fix could be implemented for the general case, and submitted a bug report.

I must say, though... very flawless handling of the issue. Instead of crashing or silently quitting, firefox simply instructed a full-download upgrade.