622588 - Changes in order of bookmarks on toolbar are not retained, or scrambled further, after quit and relaunch.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[JArcher]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13

Changes made to order of bookmarks on bookmarks toolbar, either directly on the toolbar, or in the "Organize Bookmarks" window, are NOT retained after Firefox is quit and restarted. After restart, additional scrambling (unrelated to changes previously made) may occur.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Change order of bookmarks on the bookmarks toolbar; OR change the order in the "Organize Bookmarks" window
2.Quit and restart Firefox
3.New order is not preserved; additional scrambling may occur.
Actual Results:  
Order of bookmarks on toolbar varied from changes executed before Firefox was quit.

Expected Results:  
Order of bookmarks on toolbar should have been the same as changes executed before Firefox was quit.

This seems to have been precipitated by use of Firefox Sync - it did not occur until use of Firefox Sync to update bookmarks on a second computer, which completely scrambled ALL bookmarks on that computer. After that happened, the ordering function of bookmarks on the primary computer was compromised as well. I have DISCONTINUED use of Firefox Sync but the problem remains on the primary computer.

Comment 1

[Tim (fmdeveloper)]

Please see http://philikon.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/bookmark-sync-issues/ for steps on how to revert to a backup and instructions on how to enable and post your sync-log.

Comment 2

[Tim (fmdeveloper)]

Reporter -> Are you still experiencing this issue?  Please post your sync log

Comment 3

[JArcher]

Sorry, I can't help with any update to the situation. I switched back to Xmarks the day that the problem occurred, and since it is working fine, I have decided to leave well enough alone rather than to tempt possible disruption by going back to Firefox Sync.

Comment 4

[Melchior blausand]

I'm suffering a lot from the very same issue since the days Sync was named Weave.
Mind that _separators_ and _Bookmarks without names_ seem to be seriously involved in this bug.
As a course guess, i'd hint to check:
whether instances of separators can be soberly identified when sorting and 
whether Bookmarks with empty name string loose their position when Syncing.

Note: Bookmarks wihtout names are very handy in combination with favicons in the toolbar. Therefore, missing favicons should be fetched automatically IMHO.

Using: 4 machines with different OS and Firefox Versions 
ranging from Firefox 4.0.1 to Minefield 6.0.0.4135 on XP 32, Xp 64, Win7

Comment 5

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Melchior: if you can start with a *fresh profile* and a *fresh Sync account*, and provide steps to reproduce on any platform, I'd love to see them.

For example: "start with a fresh profile. add three bookmarks to the toolbar without titles, each pointing to a different page on reddit.com. start firefox on a different machine, and ...".

Comment 6

[Melchior blausand]

Above description confirms my suspicion that entries of such kind are omitted only in one part the code, so the indexation gets shifted, resulting -among others- in Comment 7 of bug 602937 - Sync re-arranged bookmarks:
"Now, when dragging and dropping a bookmark, it doesn't get dropped where I point it - it sometimes ends up two or three locations away. " (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=602937#c7)

Comment 7

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Above description confirms my suspicion that entries of such kind are
> omitted only in one part the code, so the indexation gets shifted

With the greatest respect, Melchior, I would ask that you leave such speculation to those who are familiar with the code. It just doesn't help.

Speaking more broadly, it's not really very helpful digging into parts of bug reports that are 4-6 months old; there have been a lot of bookmarks-related fixes in Sync and Firefox over the past few months, so such reports are typically no longer relevant.

The most helpful thing anyone can do -- particularly yourself, as you apparently can sniff out this bug with ease -- is to report issues that they can reproduce in current products, starting from scratch. That allows us to find the problem and verify a fix.

Please post new problems, with steps to reproduce, in a new bug. Thanks!

Comment 8

[Melchior blausand]

Meanwhile i took the time to do as you told me and set up two new profiles, adding three bookmarks in the bookmark toolbar folder. 
Next step was adding a fourth bookmark with an empty name string and juggling it a bit around, closing and reopening FF. 
Then i added a separator and repeated reordering and relaunching.
So far everything was stable.
Then i setup another profile on my laptop and added both machines to a new sync account. 
The error appeared, as expected, during the initial sync already:
Apart from Sync "duplicating" the standard bookmarks due to different languages, both the bookmark without name and the separator did NOT appear on the Laptop at all, and when i closed down FF on the Laptop and resync'ed on the initial machine, both the bookmark without name and the separator were placed at the end of the bookmark toolbar folder.

Please forgive my speculation. I am a coder myself and ran into a quite similar problem a couple of times. I just still fear XUL...

Comment 9

[Melchior blausand]

Addendum:
When i moved the empty bookmark in it's place again on the initial machine, Synced and launched the test Profile on the Laptop, the bookmark without name appeared at the right place - the separator, however, is still missing.

If you take my hand and show me the relevant files/classes/functions, i might have a glance on it. I'd appreciate helping to debug the code, finally.

Comment 10

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Addendum:
> When i moved the empty bookmark in it's place again on the initial machine,
> Synced and launched the test Profile on the Laptop, the bookmark without
> name appeared at the right place - the separator, however, is still missing.

I will see if I can reproduce this tomorrow.


> If you take my hand and show me the relevant files/classes/functions, i
> might have a glance on it. I'd appreciate helping to debug the code, finally.

The current code (it would help if you test against nightlies) that implements bookmarks sync is here:

  http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/default/services/sync/modules/engines/bookmarks.js

You can use mxr to search around for identifiers throughout the codebase:

  http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/

This is probably the most complex engine in Sync, so don't feel ashamed if it doesn't make any sense to you!

Comment 11

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Meanwhile i took the time to do as you told me and set up two new profiles ...

I followed these steps as closely as I could discern, and was unable to reproduce the issue on a current services-central build.

Comment 12

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Perhaps you could try to reproduce with a Nightly build?

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/