Subject: bug#68831: gnu: torbrowser: noscript gets picked up by icecat

From: Clément Lassieur <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 03:19:26 +0100

Hello André,

On Tue, Jan 30 2024, André Batista wrote:

> Hi guix!
>
> It seems that 'make-icecat-extension' is not sufficiently kosher. When
> torbrowser and icecat are both installed to the same user profile,
> noscript gets picked up by icecat too. The same also happens when
> mullvadbrowser is installed: ublock extension is picked up by torbrowser.
>
> Considering there is also a patch to add Librewolf to guix, which will
> probably also share the same extensions when installed on the same
> profile, I'm unsure if the proper way to solve this issue is to write
> similar make-{$browser_name}-extension procedures or to change the
> package definitions for those new browsers.
>
> WDYT?

I thought about it, and I even started working on a fix.  But I stopped
working on it because I thought it added too much complexity for too
little gain.  See:

https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=68298

The default for Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser is that extensions are
not working because tabs are private.  Now if a user uses both Icecat
and Tor Browser and want a different set of extensions for each of them,
they can use 'guix shell', which works perfectly well.  (They can also
still add extensions to the Firefox profile.)  Having 4 versions of each
extension seems cumbersome.

Cheers,
Clément