349152 - Local copies of config files ignored and hence preferences overwritten during product update

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Ryan Cartwright]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.6-2)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.6-2)

I have made some changes to a system-wide config file - nsFilePicker.js but this bug applies to any file within /usr/lib/firefox/components (in Debian).

Whenever I update Firefox these files are overwritten and my changes lost - fair enough they are system-wide after all.
To avoid this I have placed a copy of the file (including the changes) in my local ~/firefox/<profile>/components directory - as is the norm when making user specific config changes. This file should be detected and used overriding the system-wide ones but it is not.
Thus each time I update Firefox I must make those changes again or copy a backup version of my changed file over the freshly installed one - this is not a good way to do things!

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Copy /usr/lib/firefox/components/nsFilePicker.js to ~/firefox/<profile>/components/nsFilePicker
2. Make some changes in the local copy
3. Start Firefox
Actual Results:  
Changes in local file are ignored but make those changes in the usr/lib/firefox/.. copy and they are obeyed.
Note: when making changes to nsFilePicker you need to refresh the Extensions list by adding, removing or updating an extension and then restarting Firefox. This is done in both cases and the changes in the local file are still ignored.

Expected Results:  
The local config changes should be obeyed.

The reason I am making the changes is to make firefox stop using it's own file/print dialogs and get it to use my preferred window manager ones (in my case the KDE dialogs).

So what I am really after is a local config change that allows me to set which dialogs to use. Changing nsFilePicker.js is a workaround and I'm happy with it but the local copy being ignored is a pain as I have to repeat my changes each time I update Forefox (which is quite a bit when using Debian unstable!).

Comment 1

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

You can more than probably write an extension that would modify the menu
items and all necessary xul items that make calls to nsFilePicker so
that it calls yours instead, that can be called myFilePicker, for
example, and can be shipped with your extension.

I don't know how extensions are allowed to mess up around, but it may
even be possible to only change the nsFilePicker registration with
a customized extension...

Comment 2

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Reporter, do you still see this problem with the latest Firefox 2? If not, can you please close this bug as WORKSFORME. Thanks!

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

=> incomplete