5 ms·

At last! Mozilla fixing longstanding bugs! (I jest) The devil is in the details though: https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/diff/8a6d6c094cb5a842d

by amiga386 11mo ago

At last! Mozilla fixing longstanding bugs! (I jest) The devil is in the details though: https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/diff/8a6d6c094cb5a842d415c60bb8395db03b36e531/xpcom/io/nsAppFileLocationProvider.cpp#l1.26 https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/diff/8a6d6c... Looking briefly at this, * there doesn't appear to be any migration from old directory to new directory. Does the code just use ~/.mozilla if it still exists, ~/.config/mozilla otherwise.. or does it _require_ MOZ_LEGACY_HOME=1 to be set to keep using your existing config, and just lose all config if you don't set that? * there doesn't appear to be a proper split between ~/.cache (always-removable cached data) ~/.config (configuration) and ~/.local/share (application data that is not user-editable configuration and is not just cached data either), they just moved the entire set of profile stuff to ~/.config Is that about right, or do I need to read the code more carefully?

pjmlp 11mo ago
Next bookmarks window resizing, well we can dream.
darkamaul 11mo ago
I was curious about how old the original bug report was, and it appears to be 21 years old [0]! [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356
- layer8 11mo ago
  It’s right in the first sentence of the article.
ndegruchy 11mo ago
I think there is probably a lot of work to do to fully pry the .mozilla folder apart. For a long time they've simply shipped everything in that folder and rolled with it. Making decisions on what is actually cache and what is user config vs "application data" is probably going to be harder than splitting the folder.
- abdullahkhalids 11mo ago
  Extension data also lives in the profile folder. Some of those might start failing because of splitting up the profile into multiple folders.
  - ndegruchy 11mo ago
    Oh, I hadn't even _thought_ of that. Yeah, that's going to be a fun debate. Realistically, extensions shouldn't care about the folder structure of other parts of the profile, but I also know that there is a _lot_ of history there.
- amiga386 11mo ago
  That's true, but they've already done it for macOS... ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/ (for both the config and non-config data) versus ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/ (for cached data that can always be deleted)
- shmerl 11mo ago
  FYI, they do use $HOME/.cache/mozilla already for a long time.
- shevy-java 11mo ago
  > I think there is probably a lot of work to do to fully pry the .mozilla folder apart. So, things change over time. The question is: is the codebase at Mozilla still "living" in that it can adjust or be adjusted? https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/xsoft/firefox.html https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/xsoft/firefox... Requiring a mozconfig file shows that the code base has failed to transition to cmake or meson/ninja (directly; there is some python wrapper which may help here but I refer to the primary configuration). Mozilla gave up on Firefox a long time ago already.
philo23 11mo ago
From that diff it looks to me that if ~/.mozilla exists OR if MOZ_LEGACY_HOME is set it uses ~/.mozilla, otherwise it uses the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.mozilla directory instead. So no migration to the XDG directory, but also no throwing away your existing data either.
- paulddraper 11mo ago
  That’s the safest. Who knows what might be touching that data today. Or backing it up, etc
  - gen2brain 11mo ago
    I know a few apps that did the same (mpv for example). If you still have it in home root it uses that, when you move it to .config it uses that instead. Auto migrating could and would create issues.
- shmerl 11mo ago
  So is it safe to just manually move $HOME/.mozilla to $HOME/.config/mozilla ?
  - aallaall 11mo ago
    That’s the hard part to answer, that Mozilla leaves to you!
  - Gabrys1 11mo ago
    I think yes. And that's maybe the reason they didn't properly split the files to .cache/ .config etc
  - neilv 11mo ago
    I would guess not. I see `.mozilla` absolute pathnames within some files in a profile directory (specifically, `extensions.json` and `pkcs11.txt`). (This has bitten me before. I don't know why it was done that way.)
KwanEsq 11mo ago
Looking at the full diff[0] it certainly looks like it's using ~/.cache (and has been for some time), but I cannot see anything about ~/.local/share, no. [0] https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8a6d6c094cb5a842d415c60bb8395db03b36e531 https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8a6d6c0...
- shmerl 11mo ago
  Nope, they just moved $HOME/.mozilla to $HOME/.config/mozilla it seems. Which already is a huge improvement and better than bikeshedding for decades that they also should use $HOME/.local/share/mozilla in addition.
  - sph 11mo ago
    Which means my .config directory, which is under backup, is gonna be spammed with temporary and cache files. Though not XDG-compliant, at least ~/.mozilla was in place for decades and it’s already being excluded in my backup set on my machines. Either they adopt XDG fully, putting cache files where they belong, or don’t just change things haphazardly for little benefit.
    - shmerl 11mo ago
      Not cache files if I understand correctly, they are using $HOME/.cache/mozilla for a long time already. You can exclude $HOME/.config/mozilla from your back up all the same anyway if that causes you some issues. I personally appreciate them not cluttering $HOME with this move. It is better than waiting another 21 years for them to support XDG spec fully by splitting share and config.
      - mulmen 11mo ago
        > You can exclude $HOME/.config/mozilla from your back up all the same anyway if that causes you some issues. And then just not have Firefox backups?
ryandrake 11mo ago
You may jest, but sadly, that was my first knee-jerk reaction to the headline, too. "Wow, Mozilla actually fixes Firefox bugs? Let's go!" This is how low the bar has gotten :( More of this, less AI-cramming, please!
weaksauce 11mo ago
> At last! Mozilla fixing longstanding bugs! (I jest) you joke but they did just close out the initial implementation of a something like 27 year old bug. about:keyboard was recently added to nightly to allow you to change or clear the built in keyboard shortcuts of a bunch of menu items like save, back, refresh, or open dev tools or whatever.
- georgefrowny 11mo ago
  Holy shit does this mean I can disable Ctrl-Shift-C and get my muscle memory for terminal copy back?
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Gabrys1 11mo ago
    There's an extension for that. Quite handy for in-browser terminals like one in AWS etc. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ctrl-shift-c-should-copy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ctrl-shift-c-...
    - cookiengineer 11mo ago
      I installed this extension 5 minutes ago and it's already such an improvement. Never occured to me that there can be extensions to override shortcut defaults. Thanks!
  - suprjami 11mo ago
    This was my first thought too!
  - weaksauce 11mo ago
    as a matter of fact... yes https://i.imgur.com/0uxzr4H.png https://i.imgur.com/0uxzr4H.png
- marcosdumay 11mo ago
  Is CRTL-Q included? They always insisted that applications can't change that shortcut on Linux.
batisteo 11mo ago
> there doesn't appear to be a proper split between ~/.cache (always-removable cached data) ~/.config (configuration) and ~/.local/share If that’s true, the title of the issue (and blog post) is quite untrue. Shoving everything in ~/.config is different than following the XDG Base Directory spec. At least it’s one dotfile less that’s polluting my home.
- johnisgood 11mo ago
  I agree, because of XDG_CONFIG_HOME vs. XDG_CACHE_HOME vs. XDG_DATA_HOME. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory.
eitland 11mo ago
Someday they'll stop changing the context menu if I accidentaly select something. (Some UX designer or developer thought it was a great idea to remove the back and forward buttons from the context menu if text is selected so now I have two different context menus and one of them lack the thing I am looking for most of the time which is the back button. Or fixing the tabstrip API (someone has decided we users are now too stupid to use only tree style tabs and for our own good we must be prevented from hiding the original tab bar).
- Lammy 11mo ago
  > so now I have two different context menus and one of them lack the thing I am looking for most of the time This annoys me constantly trying to get Firefox to show the “Take Screenshot” context-menu item. Yes I know about Control+Shift+S, but I'm still annoyed when my hand is already on the mouse and it won't do what I want. Although perhaps I should stop using that feature since I just while writing this comment realized how much it spies on you: https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/?search=screenshots https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/?search=screenshots
  - ndriscoll 11mo ago
    That domain is blocked on my network. What kind of information is it collecting?
    - Lammy 11mo ago
      Events: screenshots.canceled#canceled screenshots.copy#copy screenshots.download#download screenshots.failed#failed screenshots.selected#selected screenshots.started#started Counters: screenshots.copy screenshots.custom screenshots.download screenshots.element screenshots.full_page screenshots.upload screenshots.visible inb4 mention of “Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla” setting, like it's okay for software to be privacy-adversarial by default lol
      - wpm 11mo ago

pjmlp 11mo ago

Next bookmarks window resizing, well we can dream.

darkamaul 11mo ago

I was curious about how old the original bug report was, and it appears to be 21 years old [0]! [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356

layer8 11mo ago
It’s right in the first sentence of the article.

ndegruchy 11mo ago

I think there is probably a lot of work to do to fully pry the .mozilla folder apart. For a long time they've simply shipped everything in that folder and rolled with it. Making decisions on what is actually cache and what is user config vs "application data" is probably going to be harder than splitting the folder.

abdullahkhalids 11mo ago
Extension data also lives in the profile folder. Some of those might start failing because of splitting up the profile into multiple folders.
- ndegruchy 11mo ago
  Oh, I hadn't even _thought_ of that. Yeah, that's going to be a fun debate. Realistically, extensions shouldn't care about the folder structure of other parts of the profile, but I also know that there is a _lot_ of history there.
amiga386 11mo ago
That's true, but they've already done it for macOS... ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/ (for both the config and non-config data) versus ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/ (for cached data that can always be deleted)
shmerl 11mo ago
FYI, they do use $HOME/.cache/mozilla already for a long time.
shevy-java 11mo ago
> I think there is probably a lot of work to do to fully pry the .mozilla folder apart. So, things change over time. The question is: is the codebase at Mozilla still "living" in that it can adjust or be adjusted? https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/xsoft/firefox.html https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/xsoft/firefox... Requiring a mozconfig file shows that the code base has failed to transition to cmake or meson/ninja (directly; there is some python wrapper which may help here but I refer to the primary configuration). Mozilla gave up on Firefox a long time ago already.

philo23 11mo ago

From that diff it looks to me that if ~/.mozilla exists OR if MOZ_LEGACY_HOME is set it uses ~/.mozilla, otherwise it uses the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.mozilla directory instead. So no migration to the XDG directory, but also no throwing away your existing data either.

paulddraper 11mo ago
That’s the safest. Who knows what might be touching that data today. Or backing it up, etc
- gen2brain 11mo ago
  I know a few apps that did the same (mpv for example). If you still have it in home root it uses that, when you move it to .config it uses that instead. Auto migrating could and would create issues.
shmerl 11mo ago
So is it safe to just manually move $HOME/.mozilla to $HOME/.config/mozilla ?
- aallaall 11mo ago
  That’s the hard part to answer, that Mozilla leaves to you!
- Gabrys1 11mo ago
  I think yes. And that's maybe the reason they didn't properly split the files to .cache/ .config etc
- neilv 11mo ago
  I would guess not. I see `.mozilla` absolute pathnames within some files in a profile directory (specifically, `extensions.json` and `pkcs11.txt`). (This has bitten me before. I don't know why it was done that way.)

KwanEsq 11mo ago

Looking at the full diff[0] it certainly looks like it's using ~/.cache (and has been for some time), but I cannot see anything about ~/.local/share, no. [0] https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8a6d6c094cb5a842d415c60bb8395db03b36e531 https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8a6d6c0...

shmerl 11mo ago
Nope, they just moved $HOME/.mozilla to $HOME/.config/mozilla it seems. Which already is a huge improvement and better than bikeshedding for decades that they also should use $HOME/.local/share/mozilla in addition.
- sph 11mo ago
  Which means my .config directory, which is under backup, is gonna be spammed with temporary and cache files. Though not XDG-compliant, at least ~/.mozilla was in place for decades and it’s already being excluded in my backup set on my machines. Either they adopt XDG fully, putting cache files where they belong, or don’t just change things haphazardly for little benefit.
  - shmerl 11mo ago
    Not cache files if I understand correctly, they are using $HOME/.cache/mozilla for a long time already. You can exclude $HOME/.config/mozilla from your back up all the same anyway if that causes you some issues. I personally appreciate them not cluttering $HOME with this move. It is better than waiting another 21 years for them to support XDG spec fully by splitting share and config.
    - mulmen 11mo ago
      > You can exclude $HOME/.config/mozilla from your back up all the same anyway if that causes you some issues. And then just not have Firefox backups?

ryandrake 11mo ago

You may jest, but sadly, that was my first knee-jerk reaction to the headline, too. "Wow, Mozilla actually fixes Firefox bugs? Let's go!" This is how low the bar has gotten :( More of this, less AI-cramming, please!

weaksauce 11mo ago

> At last! Mozilla fixing longstanding bugs! (I jest) you joke but they did just close out the initial implementation of a something like 27 year old bug. about:keyboard was recently added to nightly to allow you to change or clear the built in keyboard shortcuts of a bunch of menu items like save, back, refresh, or open dev tools or whatever.

georgefrowny 11mo ago
Holy shit does this mean I can disable Ctrl-Shift-C and get my muscle memory for terminal copy back?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Gabrys1 11mo ago
  There's an extension for that. Quite handy for in-browser terminals like one in AWS etc. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ctrl-shift-c-should-copy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ctrl-shift-c-...
  - cookiengineer 11mo ago
    I installed this extension 5 minutes ago and it's already such an improvement. Never occured to me that there can be extensions to override shortcut defaults. Thanks!
- suprjami 11mo ago
  This was my first thought too!
- weaksauce 11mo ago
  as a matter of fact... yes https://i.imgur.com/0uxzr4H.png https://i.imgur.com/0uxzr4H.png
marcosdumay 11mo ago
Is CRTL-Q included? They always insisted that applications can't change that shortcut on Linux.

batisteo 11mo ago

> there doesn't appear to be a proper split between ~/.cache (always-removable cached data) ~/.config (configuration) and ~/.local/share If that’s true, the title of the issue (and blog post) is quite untrue. Shoving everything in ~/.config is different than following the XDG Base Directory spec. At least it’s one dotfile less that’s polluting my home.

johnisgood 11mo ago
I agree, because of XDG_CONFIG_HOME vs. XDG_CACHE_HOME vs. XDG_DATA_HOME. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory.

eitland 11mo ago

Someday they'll stop changing the context menu if I accidentaly select something. (Some UX designer or developer thought it was a great idea to remove the back and forward buttons from the context menu if text is selected so now I have two different context menus and one of them lack the thing I am looking for most of the time which is the back button. Or fixing the tabstrip API (someone has decided we users are now too stupid to use only tree style tabs and for our own good we must be prevented from hiding the original tab bar).

Lammy 11mo ago
> so now I have two different context menus and one of them lack the thing I am looking for most of the time This annoys me constantly trying to get Firefox to show the “Take Screenshot” context-menu item. Yes I know about Control+Shift+S, but I'm still annoyed when my hand is already on the mouse and it won't do what I want. Although perhaps I should stop using that feature since I just while writing this comment realized how much it spies on you: https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/?search=screenshots https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/?search=screenshots
- ndriscoll 11mo ago
  That domain is blocked on my network. What kind of information is it collecting?
  - Lammy 11mo ago
    Events: screenshots.canceled#canceled screenshots.copy#copy screenshots.download#download screenshots.failed#failed screenshots.selected#selected screenshots.started#started Counters: screenshots.copy screenshots.custom screenshots.download screenshots.element screenshots.full_page screenshots.upload screenshots.visible inb4 mention of “Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla” setting, like it's okay for software to be privacy-adversarial by default lol
    - wpm 11mo ago