869549 - Browser debugger should not trigger profile selection on startup

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(DevTools :: Debugger, defect, P3)

Description

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Starting the Browser Debugger causes Firefox to start prompting me to select a profile every time I start it up, making me choose between my default profile ("Default User") and a new profile "Default User-chrome-debugger" that the debugger has presumably created.

This is unexpected and unwelcome, since it adds a manual "choose profile" step to every browser startup.

(And even though Browser Debugger users will be Firefox and addon hackers who frequently have multiple profiles, that doesn't mean those profiles will be registered with the profile registry.  In my case, they are arbitrary directories that I specify with the -profile flag.)

So the Browser Debugger should create and use a profile in a way that doesn't cause Firefox to start prompting the user to pick a profile on startup.

Comment 1

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

Myk, do you still see the behavior in Nightly?  I don't believe I have ever seen it, so I am not a good test case.

Bug 1060464 changed how the Browser Toolbox profile is created, so it may have resolved this.

Comment 2

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] from comment #1)
> Bug 1060464 changed how the Browser Toolbox profile is created, so it may
> have resolved this.

It did indeed!  Confirmed both by testing to see if the behavior still exists and by reviewing that change, which now creates a profile directory that isn't tracked by the Profile Manager, and starts the debugging process with the -profile flag instead of the -P flag, so the Profile Manager is unaware of the debugging profile and never asks you to pick between your regular profile and that profile when starting the browser.