[Nix-dev] firefox package questions

[Nicolas Pierron]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Roland Koebler
<rk-list at simple-is-better.org> wrote:
> - Name:
>   I installed firefox-esr, but the started Firefox called itself "Nightly".
>   I searched the mailinglist, and it looks like it is called "Nightly"

This is a branding issue.
We could technically do what Debian did, i-e to use the release
parameters with a different name.

Another option for you it to use the version pre-built by Mozilla,
which is available under the attribute firefox-bin.

> - Data choices:
>   After starting Firefox, it tells me:
>   "Nightly automatically sends some data to Mozilla so that we can
>    improve your experience. [Choose What I Share]"
>
>   When I click on "Choose What I Share", I get to the data-choices-
>   preferences-dialog (Preferences -> Advanced -> Data Choices),
>   but this dialog is empty.
>
>   So, does the NixOS-Nightly-Firefox automatically send data?
>   Is there a way to prevent this?
>   And is this documented somewhere?

I added telemetry data to Firefox lately, so I can tell you that by
default telemetry is not sent on custom builds of Firefox.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Adding_a_new_Telemetry_probe#Setup_building

You can check the content sent to Mozilla by browsing "about:telemetry".
If you are still worried, you can browse "about:config" and search for
"toolkit.telemetry.enabled".

> - Parallel install of esr and newest version:
>   I would like to install both firefox and firefox-esr and access both
>   in the same environment (without switching environments).
>   Would it be possible to e.g. add a "firefox-esr"-executable-symlink by
>   firefox-esr, so that it works as follows?
>   - $ firefox
>     starts the newest version if both firefox and firefox-esr are installed,
>     or the newest or the esr version if only one is installed
>   - $ firefox-esr
>     always starts the esr-version

1/ The simplest way, is to use the nix-shell to run firefox and to
make an alias to it:
  alias firefox="nix-shell -p firefox-bin --run firefox"

But this method will not give you rollbacks.

2/ You can also install them in different user profile with the "-p"
option of nix-env.

3/ Or create a new derivation which only creates a wrapper and
"exec"-ute the binary that you want to start.

-- 
Nicolas Pierron
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasbpierron - http://nbp.name/