Gentoo Bookmarks keep reappearing in Firefox

Xharlie · n00b Joined: 21 May 2017 Posts: 6

It isn't that I don't have many, many Gentoo-adjacent pages bookmarked in my Firefox but the default ones keep reappearing, intermittently, and I have to keep cleaning them out. I'm referring to "Gentoo's Bugzilla", "... Forums", "... Packages", "Planet Gentoo", "Gentoo Wiki" which get injected into both the "Bookmarks Toolbar" and "Bookmarks Menu / Gentoo" subtrees.

How can I prevent this from happening?

I use several different Firefox profiles -- each for its own domain or workflow -- and so having these keep reappearing is rather annoying.

Incidentally, I *do* have `browser.bookmarks.restore_default_bookmarks` forced to `false` (via `policies.json`) for all my Firefox profiles and have had that set for years -- I don't remember when I set it but, presumably, I did it to prevent another operating system or platform from spamming bookmarks -- probably Windows, which I used, once.

The Firefox I'm using is from Portage and `@world` lists it as `www-client/firefox:esr`. I do not use `bindist`. Portage reports:

netfab · Posted: Mon May 20, 2024 8:25 am Post subject:

Hi,

On your system, the firefox package is installing this file somewhere in /usr/lib*/firefox.
You should try to remove it after each firefox installation. See INSTALL_MASK from man make.conf.
You should also report a bug, maybe this file can be splitted up, the app.distributor line sounds important.

Xharlie · n00b Joined: 21 May 2017 Posts: 6

Thanks @netfab -- that's what I needed to know.

As soon as I have time, I will try to submit an issue. I'd think a USE-flag to control that file would be appropriate. `USE=-bookmarks` seems nice; maybe it could cause a truncated edition of the file to be installed, instead, so that `about` and `app.distributor` etc. could still be set by Gentoo.

Xharlie · n00b Joined: 21 May 2017 Posts: 6

I still do not understand why this file would be being intermittently reapplied, even to pre-existing Firefox profiles, however.

... or why `browser.bookmarks.restore_default_bookmarks` is ignored -- does Firefox have multiple channels through which "default bookmarks" are injected?