John,
If I have portable thunderbird running, and try to start portable firefox, I get the error that firefox is already running. If I have portable firefox running, and try to start portable thunderbird, I get the converse error about thunderbird.
I think it might be because two different instances of Gecko are running, and the first one locked the profile, while the latter is respawning trying to access it resulting in the concurrency error.
I have some new stuff to show you.
Steve
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That can't be the reason, they use separate profiles and they can both be open - I open them both at the same time....
What new stuff do you have to show us exactly?
havn't put them both in the same folder or anything like that have you?
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Yes, they are in the same folder and use the same profiles, as that is how the directory structure has been set up. Why would you set up the directory structure like that if you weren't going to use the same profile? If that were the case, obviously the dir structure should be "Data\PortableThunderbird\profile" instead of Data\profile, otherwise anyone using multiple mozilla apps at once will have that error.
Dir structure:
PortableFirefox.exe
PortableThunderbird.exe
-App
--DefaultData
--gpg
--temp
--thunderbird
--ThunderbirdPortable
--FirefoxPortable
-Data
--gpg
--plugins
--profile
---bookmarkbackups
---chrome
---extensions
---Mail
--registry
Mozilla applications like Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird are not supposed to use the same profile directory. They are supposed to be seperate. So, combining them isn't supported by the launchers. The launchers check to see if a profile is locked. Mozilla apps all lock a profile when launched and leave a parent.lock file in them to indicate that they are locked. This is so multiple instances aren't editing the same file (like prefs.js, cookies, bookmarks, etc) at the same time. The launchers use this lock file to determine if it is the local or portable install of, for example, Firefox, that is running. If local, it shows an error about closing other instances. If portable, then it does a secondary launch passing the parameters to firefox.exe. Combining multiple apps into a single profile directory isn't support by Mozilla and won't be supported by the portable launchers.
BTW - I know I owe you an email (you and 591 other people). I'll ping you today.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
John,
Thanks. That entirely answers my question.