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Comment by technomancy | Hacker News Reader

I would love to have FF profiles as dotfiles that I can actually check into source control and use reliably. I blew a couple hours a few months ago trying to make FF fit into my existing system of dotfiles in git and it was extremely frustrating.

Every other program I use lets me check config into git, but FF insists on storing config data into profiles with randomly-generated names. It's very resistant to automation. I understand there is an FF-specific sync solution, but I want all my config in one place.

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You can use the -profile switch to direct Firefox to use a specific directory for its profile. We utilize this for Firefox Portable at PortableApps.com.

Incidentally, if you're on Windows, you can actually check all of Firefox Portable into source control since it runs in a single directory. You'll get 'changes' each time its run from a new location, of course.

I feel like I tried this, but it was a while ago, so I'm a bit fuzzy. I'll give it a shot; thanks.

I am not sure why the names are randomized, but you can still check in the folder if you wish. The outer profiles.ini is all you need to map in the right folder name (on Mac / Linux at least...).

They're randomized to make it harder for an attacking program to find the location of it in a worst-case scenario when a Javascript or similar bug gives it read access to the local machine. The script in this scenario would be able to read files it knew the path of but not browse the drive properly. Without randomization, it would be a safe bet to try things like %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile\Cookies and be able to pull your cookies for examination. If you can't get the USERPROFILE environment variable, the script could also do C:\Users\Admin\... and replace Admin with common names as well like John, Sue, etc. It also helps make it harder for malware to find. Not much harder, mind you, but it does require specific code to look for the Firefox profile as opposed to a single check.

I'd recommend using Firefox Sync to store your preferences and keep it synched across all your foxes.

I understand this is an option, but it's super frustrating that the FF profiles mechanism wasn't built the right way from the ground up.

There are significant advantages to having all your config in dotfiles beyond just keeping everything in one place: easy branching, getting rollback for free, human-readable diffs, etc.

Just be glad they eventually managed to kill Mork!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mork_%28file_format%29

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