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by vetinari 885 days ago
The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it): it needs to close the files from the old package and open the ones from the new package. Hence the restart. You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session.

The flatpak build avoids this problem by keeping both versions on the disk, up until you stop the app. Only at this time, the old version is removed, and the next start will be the new version.
4 comments
lolinder 885 days ago
> it just doesn't complain about it

This is the key point. I'm assuming that it downloads the update and then waits for me to agree to install it, but however it works it doesn't interrupt my browsing while I'm in the middle of something.

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gcp 885 days ago
This is how Mozilla's own updater works (if you use the .tar.gz version), but the distro package updater just overwrites everything without waiting and applications like Firefox have no control over that. As a user, you'd really want to disable unattended updates for such software.

It's not an issue for these .deb packages because they enable the (experimental) forkserver.

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Dylan16807 885 days ago
> The tar.gz build has exactly the same problem (it just doesn't complain about it)

You're mixing up two problems here. There's "please restart to update" that you can ignore/postpone, and there's "I have already updated and now going to sites is mostly broken" that you can't.

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bachmeier 885 days ago
> You can minimize the downtime by just restarting the browser and then using History | Restore previous session.

I hated the required restart with a passion when they first started it because restoring the previous session often failed. Once that worked, it was merely miserable (you still have to log in to all your sites).

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RamRodification 885 days ago
> you still have to log in to all your sites

Are you running very tight cookie/session settings or something? A restart definitely does not result in having to log in again for the stuff I'm logged in to.

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kzrdude 885 days ago
The deb version does more than complain, it can also crash and have tabs crash due to needing restart.
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gcp 885 days ago
The whole point of the about:restartrequired warning is to avoid this problem. If you're crashing, I hope you've been filing bugs.
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