344018 - compose message hangs when .signature a named pipe

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 62993

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Murray Barton]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 1.5 (20060313)

I recently migrated from Evolution and my .signature file is a unix named pipe (gives me a random quote on each signature...).  Under Thunderbird if I select that as the signature and then hit "write" then the compose window freezes and when I try to close it I get an "application not responding" message and I have to kill the whole application.  Running under Gnome on Fedora Core 5.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. account settings, attach this signature, select ~/.signature
2. click "write" (I guess this is just different but I keep looking for "compose", "compose" sounds better to!  :-)
3. thats it

Actual Results:  
program hangs. Window manager tells me "this application has stopped responding.. cancel/force quit".

Expected Results:  
My signature is inserted in the compose window!

I know it's a little esoteric but a named pipe is standard unix behaviour, Thunderbird should just open it and read from it, it should just work, it certainly shouldn't hang the whole program.

I tried the "Signature Switch 1.2.2" extension and whilst it doesn't hang it won't let me select my named pipe signature as a signature (is greyed out).

I use the code from page 596 of The Perl Cookbook to generate my random signature.

Apart from this one bug I am very happy with Thunderbird (an import from Evolution feature would have been helpful but...) well done and thanks to all who work on it.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Could you attach the code for the named pipe, so it's possible to reproduce?

Comment 2

[Murray Barton]

Attachment: pl script to generate a random signature

random signature generator attached as requested.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Ahh, found a dupe. The good news is, it seems to have a patch. 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 62993 ***

Comment 4

[Murray Barton]

Having read the thread attached to 62993 I'm not sure if it is good news or not :) What has to happen to get the/a fix into a/the next release?  I know every-one has their favourite bug and wants it fixed, this one is mine (now) :)  Is there a how-to which lays out the process for getting a bug to the top of the list, or even just getting a patch applied for that matter?  People I can petition, coerce and bribe?

Cheers Murray

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Having read the thread attached to 62993 I'm not sure if it is good news or not
> :) What has to happen to get the/a fix into a/the next release?  I know

Well, first someone needs to attach a working patch to the bug (or find someone who will provide one), if it's coded in good style it will get review granted and checked in. Feel free to step forward;)