410494 - [RFE] a command-line utility to find, query and manipulate preferences

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Cmd-line Features, enhancement)

Description

[Robert Rothenberg]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071204 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier: N/A

Having a utility which can query and manipulate Firefox and Thunderbird preferences through the command line (using stdout to return results) is useful for utilities which need to make changes automatically is useful, for example, configuring network settings and preferred accounts based on what network someone is in.

Ideally a separate utility rather than options for thunderbird or firefox may be easiest.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
N/A

Comment 1

[Calvin Liu]

There might be an issue that the running firefox process may re-write the preferences when it shuts down. So a command line utility may still need to invoke standard firefox services to do it.

Comment 2

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #1)
> There might be an issue that the running firefox process may re-write the
> preferences when it shuts down. So a command line utility may still need to
> invoke standard firefox services to do it.

The easiest anbd short-term solution is to check for a lock file in the profile, and if there is one, exit without making changes (possible with showing warning messages or returning errors, depending on options).  That was the utility can handle preferences for Mozilla-derivatives (Camino, Evolution, K-meleon, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc).

It would be nice if there were some kind of standard API to tell Mozilla-based apps to query or change a preference, though.  But this might be a longer-term goal.

Comment 3

[Calvin Liu]

The lock file seems doesn't work for mac. See bug 318801.

I agree that there must be a way to do it, but wondering how Evolution could be a Mozilla-derivatives... I suppose they're totally different.

Comment 4

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I agree that there must be a way to do it, but wondering how Evolution could be
> a Mozilla-derivatives... I suppose they're totally different.

It's been a while since I've played with Evolution. I thought it was Mozilla-based, or at least used a similar profile directory. My mistake.