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73416ba
(Get the code!)
(In reply to comment #104)
> As I mentioned way back in comment #32, the correct solution is to fix
> NetworkManager so its StateChange signals are reliable. If there is no way to
> make its StateChange signals reliable, then it shouldn't send any.
The best solution is NOT to rely on any particular tool for managing network connections, but to specify a protocol that can be used by ANY tool that is properly designed.
Hard-wiring a link to something as specific as Network manager, in a tool that is as widely used as Firefox seems to me to be quite misguided.
Compare email: I can use all sorts of email tools to communicate with all sorts of different email servers, because there are well defined protocols.
It would be totally wrong for any widely used tool to assume that everyone uses Thunderbird for reading and sending email, for example.
The great benefit of the unix/linux philosophy is that if protocols are properly designed, users and developers of particular packages can have a lot of freedom in choice of particular tools, interfaces, etc.
E.g.I have not found NetworkManager at all useful, though in some contexts I do find wlassistant useful for connecting with wireless services that don't use wpa. For wpa I prefer to use my shell scripts to launch wpa_supplicant. For static wired connections at home I use yet another mechanism.
As far as I can tell from documentation for NM on the internet, not even the developers (RedHat) expect it to be universally used on linux: it will not meet everyone's needs. So Firefox should not attempt to force people to use it.
If firefox is going to try to take action depending on what network channels happen to be working then it should interrogate the network interfaces, not a tool that only some people use.
> I actually think we should disable this feature by default until NetworkManager
> is fixed.
It should be permanently disabled since there will never be a guarantee that everyone uses NM.
I doubt that NetworkManager will *ever* have the universal role that would justify Firefox relying on it. So, at most this dependency on NM should be an option that can be turned on by people who like to use it. It should not be on by default.
I am not a networking expert just a user: I use linux all the time, in a variety of contexts and have mechanisms that work fine, without ever requiring NM. Firefox should not force me to start using NM if it does not do what I want. If I accidentally turn NM on Firefox should ignore it unless I specifically request it to use NM.