[SOLVED] BLFS: xulrunner/firefox 21.0 and search

re_nelson · 05-18-2013, 10:22 PM

This is the first problem I haven't been able to troubleshoot on LFS (SVN-20130515) coupled with BLFS (Version 2013-05-17) in a long, long time. It's more of an annoyance than a show-stopper but I'm curious if anyone else staying current with the ongoing releases has come across this.

I always build Firefox against xulrunner. The new version (21.0) just hit BLFS and I opted to upgrade from 20.0.1. Both of the version 21.0 builds were error-free and installed without fault on my x86_64 platform. And 99.5% of Firefox works just fine -- as evidenced by this post being done on Firefox 21.0.

The only feature that doesn't work is the search window situated in its default position to the right of the location URL entry window. Most aspects of the search window are operative (such as managing search engines and setting a default). Characters can be input without error. The only thing that doesn't work is actually doing the search. Neither <Enter> nor using the microscope icon perform the search. This worked fine in 20.0.1 as well as all previous versions I've built over the years, dating back to when Firefox was in the 1.X series.

In a rare move for me since I prefer that everything be built from source, I just installed the binary 21.0 version of Firefox. And that restored the functionality of the search feature proving that nothing was botched in ~/.mozilla/firefox. I may try a rebuild of Firefox without the xulrunner underpinning but before I do, I'd like to know if anyone else has come across this.

re_nelson · 05-19-2013, 01:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by re_nelson

I always build Firefox against xulrunner. The new version (21.0) just hit BLFS and I opted to upgrade from 20.0.1. Both of the version 21.0 builds were error-free and installed without fault on my x86_64 platform. And 99.5% of Firefox works just fine -- as evidenced by this post being done on Firefox 21.0.

The only feature that doesn't work is the search window situated in its default position to the right of the location URL entry window. Most aspects of the search window are operative (such as managing search engines and setting a default). Characters can be input without error. The only thing that doesn't work is actually doing the search. Neither <Enter> nor using the microscope icon perform the search. This worked fine in 20.0.1 as well as all previous versions I've built over the years, dating back to when Firefox was in the 1.X series.

I found the problem thanks to the JavaScript error console showing the precise nature of the problem of an undefined variable in the JavaScript code at the indicated line number:

./browser/base/content/browser.js: line 3562

Here's a diff:

Code:

diff -rc /tmp/mozilla-release/browser/base/content/browser.js mozilla-release/browser/base/content/browser.js
*** /tmp/mozilla-release/browser/base/content/browser.js        2013-05-11 14:19:21.000000000 -0500
--- mozilla-release/browser/base/content/browser.js     2013-05-19 01:42:13.778359190 -0500
***************
*** 3559,3568 ****
     */
    recordSearchInHealthReport: function (engine, source) {
  #ifdef MOZ_SERVICES_HEALTHREPORT
!     let reporter = Cc["@mozilla.org/datareporting/service;1"]
!                      .getService()
!                      .wrappedJSObject
!                      .healthReporter;
  
      // This can happen if the FHR component of the data reporting service is
      // disabled. This is controlled by a pref that most will never use.
--- 3559,3565 ----
     */
    recordSearchInHealthReport: function (engine, source) {
  #ifdef MOZ_SERVICES_HEALTHREPORT
!       return;
  
      // This can happen if the FHR component of the data reporting service is
      // disabled. This is controlled by a pref that most will never use.

There may be a more elegant way to achieve this with mozconfig but this was sufficient for my preference to use applications built from source instead of a pre-packaged binary. Plus, in the spirit of LFS, I make the rules for my system!