Create temporary profile for background updates to allow more flexibility

[AlexanderL]

Hello, this is a sort of followup or addition this post Add option to update and keep profile

After posting, I continued searching for a good way to handle the situation when a user encounters a workstation with a Firefox installation that is older than the user's profile.

I found the firefox --backgroundtask backgroundupdate command, and while it looked promising to run from a script as a part of a user logon procedure, it fell on the reason that the a default user profile needs to exist, AND that profile needs to match the current installed version (XULRunner says: "This profile was last used with a newer version of this application. Please create a new profile"). This is most unfortunate.

Since the standard installer for the latest version obviously can install on top of an earlier version without this restriction, and a user then successfully can copy whatever version profile they happen to have to the system, run Firefox and use that profile, I don't really see why the updater would have such a strict requirement. A flag to run the update command much like a regular installation would be very appreciated, or maybe the installation should trigger a creation of a temporary new user profile and then switch back to the original after a successful update?

Of course, it would be possible to write a script that downloads and runs the latest installer manually, but using a built in function would be more... feelgood!

Best regards

Alexander

[Jon]

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