727122 - With the removal of application.ini, there is no way to turn off profile migration

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: Migration, defect)

Description

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

bug 286557 added an entry to application.ini, EnableProfileMigration, which allowed profile migration to be turned off.

It could not be done via a preference because of how early the code runs (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286557#c12)

Unfortunately bug 686466 removed the application.ini completely (or at least hardcoded it so that it can't be changed to set this options)

So we need a way to turn off profile migration again.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Doesn't this option still exist but using override.ini:

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/annotate/373c710112e6/toolkit/xre/nsAppRunner.cpp#l3412

?

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Thanks for the tip. You write in bug 727122:

> You may need to add an argument -override <path/to/override file> to get it to work.

Mike can correct me, but I think that won't work in a corporate desktop environment where you can't always control how Firefox is started.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

(just how it's installed)

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to Ben Bucksch (:BenB) from comment #2)
> Thanks for the tip. You write in bug 727122:
> 
> > You may need to add an argument -override <path/to/override file> to get it to work.
> 
> Mike can correct me, but I think that won't work in a corporate desktop
> environment where you can't always control how Firefox is started.

That trick isn't needed for the EnableProfileMigrator in override.ini - if you read the code, you'll see that if the migrator is going to run, override.ini is attempted to be loaded regardless of any arguments.

Comment 5

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

So yeah, I just learned this today.

So for profile migrator, override.ini is read without passing an argument.

And it looks like for crash reporter, there is a file crashreporter-override.ini.

The only thing that can be specified in the default override.ini is the EnableProfileMigration stuff. Nothing else is read.

I have no idea on crashreporter-override.

I had no idea this feature was there, and it's documented as well:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Command_Line_Options

Learn something new every day.

So this bug is invalid.

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Thanks, Mark!

Comment 7

[Neustradamus]

Hello guys,

There is a problem with application.ini since Firefox/Thunderbird 11 and SeaMonkey 2.8.

Can you read : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=723493 and resolve this bug?

I would like to use new versions.