Note

• This issue is reproducible only on Snap and Flatpak Firefox builds.

Affected versions

• Firefox 101.0b8

Affected platforms

• Ubuntu 16.04x64, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Firefox.
2. Go to about:preferences.
3. In 'General' section click the 'Browse' button from 'Downloads'.
4. Select another folder, different from 'Downloads' and click the Open button.

Expected result

• The selected folder is set as the new download location.

Actual result

• The folder is opened. No folder can't be set as a new download location.

Regression range

• I was unable to search for a regression on the Snap and Flatpak builds.

Additional notes

• Note that this issue is not reproducible on the normal Beta build, or on Mac, or Windows OSs.
• The download action is working as expected on both Snap and Flatpak builds, on the default download location (Downloads).
• The issue is not reproducible on Firefox 100.0.1 Snap build, or on Firefox 91.9.0esr Snap build.

This seems like a serious regression. Who can help getting eyes on this and/or figuring out what caused the regression?

Olivier, do you happen to know how to bisect snaps?

I cannot reproduce this issue on 102.0b2 flatpak and snap builds. I can successfully select a new folder as a download location on Ubuntu 20.04.

I'm going to try and have a look at that.

I cant repro either on 101.0-2 release of snap. I also dont have a Open when selecting the download folder, but rather a Select button. It does not looks like I can install this older version of snap to verify ...

So it looks like to just get and then install a previous revision of a snap, you need:

• to have a developper account
• to connect it to snapcraft locally
• to have some permissions (which?) on the target package

That seems not really clear from https://snapcraft.io/docs/release-management, and the consequence is that I'm unable to install 101.0b8 release to see if I was reproducing the issue at first ...

There's no change at all on the snap packate itself from 101.0b8 to current beta: https://git.launchpad.net/~mozilla-snaps/firefox-snap/+git/firefox-snap/log/?h=beta except a patch mentionned to be now upstream.

Were you using some non default desktop environment?

FTR, Olivier has credentials to run older builds and could not repro the issue either, we both have Select instead of Open when selecting the folder. It could be outside of Firefox, we're checking.

I can confirm Alexandre's comment (sorry for the late response). I tested various builds, including 101.0b8 against which this was originally reported, in an Ubuntu 22.04 VM, and I couldn't observe the problem. I always have a Select button, not an Open one.

This sounds like it could be a problem with the implementation of the FileChooser portal, if it affects both the snap and the flatpak versions of firefox.

Mihai, if you can still reproduce the issue, can you provide details on your desktop environment? Is it fully up-to-date? Can you share the output of journalctl -b ?

Emilio, to answer your question (sorry it went unnoticed until now): there is no easy/automated manner to bisect snaps.

Snaps are published in the beta channel for each firefox beta version, and in the edge channel twice daily (matching roughly nightly builds), but to access old builds one needs collaborator status in the snap store, which only a small set of people at Mozilla/Canonical have.

It seems that the issue is no longer reproducible on Firefox 102.0b9. Tests were performed under Ubuntu 20.04.
I will close this issue as Resolved - WORKSFORME and will reopen it if necessary.