Urlbar search icons disappear after browser restart

Patch for #30845 (moved) fixes this issue on a fresh profile, but not on an already existing profile which was already restarted at least once. On top of that, there is a quite surprising behaviour:

1. Open Tor Browser ESR68 without patch for #30845 (moved).
2. Restart browser.
3. Check that search icons have disappeared.
4. Change pref from #30845 (moved) and restart.
5. Urlbar is unusable, and browser console shows:

1567091784597	addons.xpi-utils	WARN	Synchronous load of XPI database due to getAddonsByType([theme]) Stack: getAddonsByType@re[/gre/modules/addons/XPIDatabase.jsm:1997:21](/gre/modules/addons/XPIDatabase.jsm:1997:21)
installBuiltinAddon@re[/gre/modules/addons/XPIInstall.jsm:4283:24](/gre/modules/addons/XPIInstall.jsm:4283:24)
_openNetworkSettings@jar:file:///tor-browser_en-US/Browser/browser/omni.ja!/chrome/torlauncher/components/tl-process.js:749:11
_controlTor@jar:file:///tor-browser_en-US/Browser/browser/omni.ja!/chrome/torlauncher/components/tl-process.js:584:14
TorStartAndControlTor@jar:file:///tor-browser_en-US/Browser/browser/omni.ja!/chrome/torlauncher/components/tl-process.js:331:10
observe@jar:file:///tor-browser_en-US/Browser/browser/omni.ja!/chrome/torlauncher/components/tl-process.js:133:14

which might be related, but did not investigate yet.

added TorBrowserTeam201908R component::applications/tor browser ff68-esr owner::tbb-team priority::medium resolution::fixed severity::normal status::closed tbb-9.0-must-alpha type::defect labels

Trac:
Component: - Select a component to Applications/Tor Browser
Owner: N/A to tbb-team

3. Check that search icons have disappeared. I.e. some functionality has been removed. Changing prefs can't restore it.

Bugzilla ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1577750

There seems to be two different paths for loading search engines: from cache and from scratch. Initially they are loaded from scratch, and this seems to ignore extensions.enabledScopes, so the search extensions are installed and that's why it works on first time. After restart, engines are loaded from cache and in that case I think extensions.enabledScopes is enforced and previously installed search extensions are disabled (the icons are a moz-extension:// resource and that's probably why they disappear, because the extension is not enabled).

The patch in https://github.com/acatarineu/tor-browser/commit/31563 forces reloading the search extensions if extensions.enabledScopes in the cache has changed, and fixes the engines when switching from 1 to 5 and restarting the browser.

Trac:
Status: new to needs_review
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201908 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201908R added

While testing manually I still get on first re-start no icons. Does that work for you now? However, on the second restart everything is as it should with your patch. So, I cherry-picked it to tor-browser-68.1.0esr-9.0-1 (commit dc1c60e81e6d23560d597c390eed48b2331f005c).

I tested on a Linux bundle by manually patching the files in the respective omni.ja files: first making sure we start with enabledSopes set to 1 and then after quitting applying your patch and setting enabledScopes to 5. Then I cleared the startupCache and restarted showing the missing search icons. After another restart everything worked fine.

I think I tested both in Firefox (since I had filed the bugzilla ticket) and Tor Browser, but perhaps I followed a different sequence of actions.

Now testing again in Tor Browser, on first restart after setting enabledScopes to 5 and applying the patch I actually have the issue of the urlbar not working (which seems to be correlated with the tor-launcher error log mentioned in the description). Opening a new window or restarting the browser fixes it, and icons are also shown. So search extensions seem to be installed, and urlbar being broken seems like a separate issue probably unique to Tor Browser. Do you also have the issue of urlbar being broken, or it's just the icons not shown? I can't reproduce icons not being shown after setting enabledScopes to 5 and applying the patch.

Replying to acat:

I think I tested both in Firefox (since I had filed the bugzilla ticket) and Tor Browser, but perhaps I followed a different sequence of actions.

Now testing again in Tor Browser, on first restart after setting enabledScopes to 5 and applying the patch I actually have the issue of the urlbar not working (which seems to be correlated with the tor-launcher error log mentioned in the description). Opening a new window or restarting the browser fixes it, and icons are also shown. So search extensions seem to be installed, and urlbar being broken seems like a separate issue probably unique to Tor Browser. Do you also have the issue of urlbar being broken, or it's just the icons not shown?

The URL bar is broken for me. So, yes, could you open a new bug for that (and probably Cc mcs and brade). I recall that I had some other weird URL bar brokeness (same symptoms) during normal browsing with nightly builds during the last week. Might be more to it. Anyway, I think we are done here, thanks.

Trac:
Status: needs_review to closed
Resolution: N/A to fixed

closed

mentioned in issue #33342 (moved)

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#31563 (closed)