[tor-talk] still problems - update available

[Mike Perry]

Thus spake Joe Btfsplk (joebtfsplk at gmx.com):

> On 10/14/2011 3:07 PM, Mike Perry wrote:
>
> >What is the value of torbrowser.version?
> There's the problem.  The line in about:config is:  torbrowser.version;  
> user set  2.2.32-4-Windows-
> Also, in prefs.js, has this line:
> "user_pref("torbrowser.version", "2.2.32-4-Windows-");"
> Only thing is, "user" didn't set it.  What I discovered from extracting 
> another fresh 2.2.33-3 to a diff folder, is it is already a pre 
> configured "user pref" that names the version.  If it's pre configured, 
> it's not a user set pref.  And what does the browser ver # have to do w/ 
> a * user * pref?

Yeah, we actually have a bug for the user_pref issue:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3944
 
> The problem w/ the startup page showing there was a new version, was I 
> copied my old profile (say from 2.2.32-4) into the latest TBB ver 
> profile folder.  Something perfectly normal & acceptable in Firefox.  
> Why would I want to reconfig the Aurora UI ( things like not show 
> suggestions when typing in address bar, font size, etc.), or reinstall & 
> reconfigure the few extensions used in TBB - every time a new version 
> comes out?

I would argue that you're actually doing it backwards. Firefox copies
over your existing files with the new version.

But you're right, the user_prefs bug makes this direction painful for
you if you want to keep your prefs.
 
> When I * manually " check for updates thru options / help, it does NOT 
> notify of a later avail ver.  So, process of * manually * checking 
> updates must be different than one used at startup.  Or maybe they're 
> checking 2 diff things?

We have disabled the Firefox update process because we've assumed that
Thandy will appear somehow. I am doubting that this will ever happen,
though, since we have no spare development effort to shepherd Thandy
into a release for at least the entire duration of the tor 0.2.3.x/TBB
2.3.x release cycle, and possibly beyond..

I've just created this ticket for me to look into the Firerfox
updater, to see if we can just deploy that instead/as a stop-gap:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234

> Unless for each new TBB ver, where I want to use my * existing * 
> profile,  I manually edit the torbrowser.version string to match latest 
> ver just installed, I'd always get the erroneous startup screen msg.  
> Doesn't seem like it's set up for users to use their last profile (even 
> from one minor ver ago).

I would recommend just overwriting your old TBB dir with the new data.
Sometimes we change prefs+create new ones, which could cause bugs for
you when you copy old-over-new. I guess you're right in that we should
only be doing that for built-in prefs, too, though.

If there are a lot of prefs you need to change, you (or we) might also
be doing it wrong. Might I ask which ones you need to keep?
 

-- 
Mike Perry
Mad Computer Scientist
fscked.org evil labs
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