401041 - extensions.ini hardcodes extensions path

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 344671

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Steve Horbachuk]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8

Here is a snip from my extensions.ini:
[ExtensionDirs]
Extension0=C:\Documents and Settings\steve\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\sm7vgomw.default\extensions\{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}

It should be like this instead:
[ExtensionDirs]
Extension0=C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\sm7vgomw.default\extensions\{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}

Note that "steve" should be replaced with the environment variable for the current username. In case I want to copy my entire windows profile to be used on another account name, the firefox extensions will load properly.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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Comment 1

[Wolf [:wolf]]

If you copy such a profile, delete extensions.ini and its other extensions.* friends and let firefox rebuild those files automatically.

Using a relative path might not be a bad idea, using enviroment variables, otoh, might be. since it really doesn't gain anything except for your very small and pretty uncommon use case, for which there's a very easy workaround.

Comment 2

[Steve Horbachuk]

I really don't think its that uncommon. Many organizations use mandatory windows profiles (on a terminal server for example). On these mandatory profiles they have a custom firefox profile with several extensions installed.

I don't see any harm in using a relative path.

Thanks for replying.

Comment 4

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

The file itself auto-regenerates. If we were to implement something like this it would be relative to the actual Firefox profile as requested in bug 344671.

btw: there are files not that have are not part of the EM that contain paths and those files also auto-regenerate.