I'm a Nightly only user who periodically uses Release, and I'm not thrilled with the idea of my profile going away. Nightly users are probably better suited to dealing with this (using sync, etc) than the Beta population. Aiui, some Beta users aren't conscious Beta users, just people chosen to be in the Beta population when first installing Firefox; they may be less prepared to deal with their profile going away.
Have we considered changing the "*Close Firefox* Only one copy..." alert to a profile switcher dialog, with a message like "Another copy of Firefox is using this profile. Use another profile?" On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 4:28 PM, Dave Townsend <dtowns...@mozilla.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 4:11 PM, Mike Hommey <m...@glandium.org> wrote: > > > On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 03:43:54PM -0700, Dave Townsend wrote: > > > TL;DR: We should make each Firefox channel use its own profile data > > > allowing you to run multiple channels at the same time. > > > > > > Running multiple channels of Firefox is currently harder than it needs > to > > > be. You can't start more than one channel at a time and either you use > > the > > > same profile data for each channel running the risk of hitting bugs > with > > > downgrades or you have to create custom shortcuts to use different > > profiles > > > for each channel. The exception to this is the developer edition which > > uses > > > its own profile data by default. This turned out to be what most > > developers > > > wanted and matches Chrome's behaviour. So we should do the same thing > for > > > the other channels. > > > > > > The technical details of how to do this are a little challenging so > here > > is > > > a proposal that hopes to limit the impact of the change: > > > > > > * Release will continue to work as it does today. The default profile > > > listed in profiles.ini will be loaded and used as normal. > > > * When Nightly and Beta first start they will look for a profile to > use: > > > ** First choice will be determined by a new flag in profiles.ini for > each > > > channel. > > > ** Second choice will be a profile with a specific name which will be > > > different for each channel. We do this because if the user runs an > older > > > build of Firefox it will blow away the new flags we use above. > > > ** Finally if no profile has been found a new profile will be created > > with > > > the appropriate name. > > > * Throughout, if the command line includes --profile or -P to choose a > > > specific profile then we respect that. > > > > > > The developer edition already does effectively the above just without > the > > > custom flag which allows you to rename your profile ( > > > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098986). As part of this > > we > > > would upgrade developer edition to support this too. > > > > > > How we populate the new profile we create for Nightly and Beta channels > > is > > > an open question. We could simply clone the existing Release profile or > > use > > > Firefox Refresh to copy across the basic data. In either case we can > > notify > > > the user to let them know what has happened. > > > > > > If users still want to share profiles between channels then they will > > have > > > that option going forwards by simply going to about:profiles and > > choosing a > > > different default profile for the channel they are running. > > > > > > The main issue with this proposal is what happens if users downgrade > > > Nightly or Beta to a version before we make these changes. They will > > revert > > > back to the existing profile selection mechanism, effectively sharing > > > profiles with the release channel again. Upgrading again will take them > > > back to their new default profile unless they have renamed it away from > > the > > > custom name we choose in which case a new default will be created > again. > > > > > > Does anyone think we shouldn't do this or have comments on my proposal > > for > > > implementing it? > > > > It sounds like this will make every user of non-Release create a new > > profile, while, in practice, few of them are juggling with versions. How > > about only switching to a new profile if the update channel is different > > from the last time the existing profile was used? > > > > Yeah that would be a good idea but I don't think we have any way to detect > that at the moment. It would also mean that someone who exclusively uses > nightly but then much later after we implemented this installed release > would see release "steal" their profile. Maybe that's no different to it > happening right when we implement it. > > Perhaps it would be worth, as a separate exercise, offering to clean up > profiles that have been unused for a long period of time. > > > > Also, what about ESR? > > > Good point. I think we would treat it like a release so just keep the > existing profile behaviour. > _______________________________________________ > dev-platform mailing list > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
