590173 - ProfileManager should have the ability to generate a profile with certain default preferences

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Testing Graveyard :: ProfileManager, enhancement)

Description

[Jeff Hammel]

In other words, preferences may be importable from a template (or profile, etc), or, since its just a key-value mapping, a set of templates applied in a chain.

The form of the template is open.  It should be allowable to use the preferences from an existing profile as part of the template.  This could easily be done by locally having a `user_pref` function and then evalling prefs.js from the profile.

Another possibility is .ini files, since they're a semi-standard human-editable key value mapping vehicle.  The sections could additionally be exploited to (e.g.) allow importing from a particular section or set of sections.  (FWIW, having prefs.js being a free-form JS file makes dealing with it computationally outside of the XUL app being run effectively impossible.  Certain conventions can (and across our code base, are) assumed to make the problem tractable, but this will only work in the simple albeit likely case).

Comment 1

[the-edmeister]

I have been using a user.js file for the last 5 years to speed things up when I create a new Profile. I drop that file into the new Profile, start Firefox, and those prefs are picked up. No need to mess with about:config or copy & paste to prefs.js .