I had a great idea, but I'm sure it could work with speed issues. PFx and PTB have many small (less than 4kB) files, which each have their own equal space in memory (4kB). This results in a lot of disk space being used for a relatively small amount of data.
I checked the size of my PortableFirefox folder:
Size: 71.4 MB (74,911,538 bytes)
Size on disk: 82.1 MB (86,147,072 bytes)
(35MB cache limit)
More than 10MB wasted.
If the folder were inside a tarball, size on disk would probably be not much more than 75,000,000 bytes.
I'm just not sure how much speed would be lost editing a tarball instead of separate files.
You are here
App in a tarball?
June 30, 2006 - 2:03pm
#1
App in a tarball?
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
Even if this were possible, John couldn't do it because of Mozilla's trademark distribution policies, and it would probably break auto-update completely.
The trademark thing is why John stopped UPXing FF and TB, also. Mozilla says you can't distribute modified binaries ("binaries" being anything that is in the Firefox folder as part of a default installation) and still call the program "Mozilla <whatever>," nor are you even allowed to use the official artwork. You're only allowed to do so with unmodified binaries.
-
fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
The binaries wouldn't be modified, they'd be put in a stream of continuous data. Any compression actually modifies the binaries.
Vintage!
That's a bit of a gray area, but it would still be considered a modification, as you're now moving all the data from a bunch of separate files into a single file (the tarball). My guess is that Mozilla would construe that as "modifying the binaries."
I realize it's an argument of semantics, but that's just the way it is.
-
fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
John puts it in a 7z SFX. That's more modification than a tarball.
Vintage!
You're talking two completely different things here. The 7-Zip self-extractor is to extract the PFF binaries to your portable drive. Not much difference than if you were to zip up an unmodified copy of Firefox from Program Files and give it to somebody (and even then, John had to get special permission).
Unless I'm mistaken, what you're talking about doing would entirely modify the way Firefox works. It's akin to taking the Firefox source, changing it so it would read its files from a tarball instead of normally, and then recompiling it with all official artwork and the "Mozilla Firefox" name. Mozilla would never allow it.
If this is the way you really want Firefox to work, you'll have better luck posting a feature request in Bugzilla. At least if it's implemented that way, it doesn't fly in the face of Mozilla's trademark policies, since then it would be official.
-
fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
One would not need to modify Fx source, if that's what you're getting at. An external program would simply access the data inside a tarball instead of folders. (we already use an external program to make it portable). I guess the best thing to do would be to ask for permission. There's really no point in arguing over what they would think. I'm writing the request in another tab now.
Vintage!
Adding extensions and themes is not mucking with the source, yet you can't distribute that either...
~Lurk~ Email
~Lurk~
Here's the difference: the PFF launcher launches an unmodified copy of Firefox (using the -profile switch to make it portable), and then (usually) terminates. Your solution would require a program to stay resident and intercept Firefox's read file/write file requests at the OS level and redirect them to the tarball (pretty low-level stuff). That's as difficult as trying to make a "true" registry wrapper that redirects registry reads and writes in realtime--in other words, pretty close to impossible.
And again, you're indirectly modifying the way Firefox works. Unless you get explicit permission from Mozilla, they're going to have a problem with someone distributing such a mod.
-
fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
registry re-director nearly impossible? I wouldn't say that as such...
Yours
Steve Lamerton
I don't count things like "Registry Rapper" as redirectors, since they just back-up the registry and restore afterwards. How to you redirect registry operations in realtime (so that nothing is ever written to the registry, even though the hosted program doesn't know any better)? I'd imagine that would require the redirector to have some pretty low-level hooks into the operating system, possibly even a driver--installation of which would require admin privileges.
-
fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
level really does say it all...
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Wouldn't anything that has to hook itself into the operating system at that low a level require administrative privileges, at least to set it up for the first time on a virgin system?
I'm really curious as to how it can be done.
-
fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Are you going to make a meainful reply, or just keep telling other that they're wrong?
he's right to be skeptical, after all there isn't really an open source product like this anywhere. If I wasn't writing the program I'm sure I'd be the same.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
I replied to you, not to him.
I'm beimg vague for a reason, and that is that I don't know that the approach that I am taking will even work, that's why I'm being like that. As Bruce suggests things I check them out.
Yours
Steve Lamerton