692093 - Editing Update Channel in Config Editor doesn't change prefs

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 314407

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[john]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) AppleWebKit/534.50 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Safari/534.50

Steps to reproduce:

Mac (TB versions 6-8) - Preferences --> Advanced --> General --> Config Editor.  Change app.update.channel from 'beta' to 'release'.  Go to Thunderbird --> About Thunderbird.  Still on the beta channel.  Restart Thunderbird -- still in beta channel.  Now, in OSX, go to Thunderbird --> Contents --> defaults --> pref --> channel-prefs.js.  Change 'beta' to 'release'.  Restart Thunderbird.  NOW on the release channel.


Actual results:

Release channel not changed when the config editor is edited -- the pref must be reset manually.


Expected results:

Entering 'release' in place of 'beta' in the config editor should have changed the Thunderbird update channel subscription.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

As far as I know, that was done on purpose. That behavior would have to be changed in the Toolkit code anyway and likely couldn't be done separately for Thunderbird.

Comment 2

[john]

Strange -- all of the knowledgebase articles seem to say that is how you do it (they do mention the .js file as well, but it seemed easier to me to do it in Thunderbird prefs):

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_update#Update_channels_-_Advanced
http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.channel

There are even plugins (for FF/TB) to allow you to change these pref settings more easily...

Basically the issue is once you've chosen an update channel, there's no easy way to get out of it -- when TB went to rapid releases I wanted to get of the beta channel and it's taken me this long to realize the way I had done it (prefs) -- through 6, 7 and now 8 -- wasn't working and I had to edit the .js file directly.

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

Not quite, both articles actually mention that restriction:

(In reply to john from comment #2)
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_update#Update_channels_-_Advanced

"Note that you cannot change channel using about:config. Instead, you can use the Update Channel Changer extension (go to Help -> Check for Updates -> Change Update Channel). Alternatively, you can edit the channel-prefs.js file with a text editor."

> http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.channel#Caveats

"This preference can only be changed by editing channel-prefs.js in the application directory."

With the recent changes in the update process implemented in the Help > About dialog, and the ability of changing the update channel from there at some point, I don't know what the current status is in making this process easier.

xref Firefox bug 598594.

Comment 4

[john]

I must have read those docs 5 times (and again just now) and missed those lines.  So much for that.

Thanks for the replies -- I appreciate it!

john.

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

You are welcome. The reasoning is given in attachment #192129 [details] [diff] [review] (bug 302721):
>    // Read the update channel from defaults only.  We do this to ensure that
>    // the channel is tightly coupled with the application and does not apply
>    // to other instances of the application that may use the same profile.

I leave this open to be either duped to a Toolkit bug or for any TB-specific investigation whether or not this behavior should be changed.

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

The easy way to switch channels is to just download and install another Thunderbird build from the website over the top. This also ensures that you'll properly get updates in that new channel.