Starting a Firefox Instance With a Fresh Profile

Maybe it is just me, but in doing anything with development builds of Firefox, I was constantly bothered by having my profile mucked around with, or having to create fresh profiles, or having to switch the default profile for some set of tests I wanted to run.

I had slapped together little scripts to deal with some of this, but I finally got them all together in one script and it has been working for me for a while. This may be useful to others. Maybe not.

One thing different about this is that I am doing things on a Mac. I have not tried to make the script cross-platform at all. I also find the executables in the places I keep them. There is no way to find out about the different copies of Firefox that are installed on a particular machine. There is no global installation log. And even though all of the apps read from resources in the 'Application Support' folder, none of them store information there that would tell one which instances of Firefox have been run. And it is not the most elegnt or clever script I have written. But it works. If anybody has suggestions for something to replace this find command, or anything else, please suggest. Until then, here it is:

http://www.wykiwyk.com/mozilla/newbrowser.pl

So, the script will create a fresh profile, put some preferences into it, ask you to identify the copy of Firefox that you want to run and then launch with the new profile. Here is an example of it being run:

% newbrowser 
1: /Users/ray/mo/trowser/mozilla/dist/MinefieldDebug.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
2: /Users/ray/mo/trowser2/mozilla/dist/Minefield.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
3: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_1.5.0.11.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
4: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_1.5.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
5: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_2.0.0.2.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
6: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_2.0.0.4.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
7: /Applications/Mozilla/GranParadiso_20070426.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
8: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a2pre_20070130.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
9: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a2pre_20070206.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
10: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070222.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
11: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070308.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
12: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070317.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
13: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070324.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
14: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a4pre_20070413.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
15: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a5pre_20070503.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
16: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a5pre_20070519.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
17: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a6pre_20070623.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
which executable? 1
cmd = "NO_EM_RESTART=1 /Users/ray/mo/trowser_newbad/mozilla/dist/Minefield.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profile /tmp/3lwhsxqz.mozilla_20070707_215451_PDT  2>&1"
WARNING: NS_ENSURE_TRUE(compMgr) failed: file nsComponentManagerUtils.cpp, line 90
Type Manifest File: /tmp/3lwhsxqz.mozilla_20070707_215451_PDT/xpti.dat
*** Registering xpconnect components (all right -- a generic module!)
etc, etc, etc, etc, ....

I have also made it trivial to run a set of reftests, as so:

% newbrowser -reftest layout/reftests/reftest.list
1: /Users/ray/mo/trowser/mozilla/dist/MinefieldDebug.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
2: /Users/ray/mo/trowser_newbad/mozilla/dist/Minefield.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
3: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_1.5.0.11.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
4: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_1.5.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
5: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_2.0.0.2.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
6: /Applications/Mozilla/Firefox_2.0.0.4.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
7: /Applications/Mozilla/GranParadiso_20070426.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
8: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a2pre_20070130.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
9: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a2pre_20070206.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
10: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070222.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
11: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070308.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
12: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070317.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
13: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a3pre_20070324.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
14: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a4pre_20070413.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
15: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a5pre_20070503.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
16: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a5pre_20070519.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
17: /Applications/Mozilla/Minefield_3.0a6pre_20070623.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
which executable? 1
cmd = "NO_EM_RESTART=1 /Users/ray/mo/trowser/mozilla/dist/MinefieldDebug.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profile /tmp/60yqqqnd.mozilla_20070707_221500_PDT --reftest layout/reftests/reftest.list 2>&1 | /usr/bin/grep '^REFTEST '"
etc, etc, etc, etc, ....

For more:

% newbrowser -usage
newbrowser [ -noUserJS ] [ -reftest <manifest file> ] [ -exec <executable> ]
%