add blogentry about conkeror, mozilla and a temp directory
Signed-off-by: Nico Schottelius <nico@ikn.schottelius.org>
This commit is contained in:
Nico Schottelius
parent
100687d94e
commit
3eba6daa58
1 changed files with 102 additions and 0 deletions
102
blog/mozilla-conkeror-change-tempdir.mdwn
Normal file
102
blog/mozilla-conkeror-change-tempdir.mdwn
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
|
||||||
|
[[!meta title="How to change the tempdir for Mozilla (general) and conkeror"]]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Some weeks ago I got a good hint from
|
||||||
|
[[Axel Stefan Beckert|dokumentationen/axel-stefan-beckert]], to try [conkeror](http://conkeror.org/)
|
||||||
|
as an alternative for the
|
||||||
|
[Firefox](http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html) browser.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Although I am not used to the [emacs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs)
|
||||||
|
shortcuts, it is very good usable with the keyboard only.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the last few days I have been missing one important feature,
|
||||||
|
one of the most important features of a browser:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
to be able to edit a textbox with an external editor
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I often edit large wiki pages and rearange them, which is a pain
|
||||||
|
without a real editor.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Conkeror supports [external editing](http://conkeror.org/ExternalEditing),
|
||||||
|
but defaults to
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
* $VISUAL
|
||||||
|
* $EDITOR
|
||||||
|
* or emacs
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
None of the is usable for me, because **$VISUAL** and **$EDITOR**
|
||||||
|
are set to [vim](http://www.vim.org/) and vim requires a terminal.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After I was told on [#conkeror](irc://irc.freenode.org/#conkeror)
|
||||||
|
to modify ***~/.conkerorrc/init.js*** to include
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
editor_shell_command = "urxvt -e vim";
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
it worked like a charm (besides debugging it for some others days,
|
||||||
|
until I found out that there was always one instance of conkeror
|
||||||
|
running, so it never re-read the configuration file). I can now
|
||||||
|
edit textboxes in conkeror with vim!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But then I noticed, that conkeror creates a temporary file below
|
||||||
|
***/tmp***, which I do not like, because all my data should be
|
||||||
|
put on my [encrypted home directory](http://code.google.com/p/cryptsetup/),
|
||||||
|
not on the unencrypted root partition.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So I started to search for a configuration variable in the
|
||||||
|
[configuration window](about:config), but did not find any hint.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As I am running conkeror from the git source, I began to dig through it
|
||||||
|
and started in **modules/external-editor.js**, where I found the
|
||||||
|
function **open_with_external_editor()**:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
76 function open_with_external_editor (lspec) {
|
||||||
|
77 keywords(arguments);
|
||||||
|
78 let [file, temp] = yield download_as_temporary(lspec);
|
||||||
|
79 yield open_file_with_external_editor(file, $line = arguments.$line, $temporary = temp);
|
||||||
|
80 }
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ok, what is **download_as_temporary()** doing? The file **modules/save.js** helped
|
||||||
|
me:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
228 function download_as_temporary (lspec) {
|
||||||
|
243 var file = get_temporary_file(suggest_file_name(lspec));
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Well, well, so what's about the **get_temporary_file()** function? The file
|
||||||
|
**modules/utils.js** contains it:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
799 function get_temporary_file (name) {
|
||||||
|
800 if (name == null)
|
||||||
|
801 name = "temp.txt";
|
||||||
|
802 var file = file_locator.get("TmpD", Ci.nsIFile);
|
||||||
|
803 file.append(name);
|
||||||
|
804 // Create the file now to ensure that no exploits are possible
|
||||||
|
805 file.createUnique(Ci.nsIFile.NORMAL_FILE_TYPE, 0600);
|
||||||
|
806 return file;
|
||||||
|
807 }
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Searching for **Ci.nsIFile** in conkerors source did not reveal
|
||||||
|
many information, so I got back to my **seoc** (search engine of choice) and
|
||||||
|
found some hints on the [mozilla developer center](https://developer.mozilla.org)
|
||||||
|
about [nsIFile](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/nsIFile) and
|
||||||
|
[TmpD](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Code_snippets/File_I%2F%2FO)
|
||||||
|
and a reference to the IRC channel [#extdev](irc://irc.mozilla.org/extdev).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After I described my problem in that IRC channel,
|
||||||
|
[Michael Kaply](http://www.kaply.com/weblog/about/)
|
||||||
|
told me the answer to the question
|
||||||
|
"[What defines or where is the TmpD variable defined?](http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.9.2/source/xpcom/io/SpecialSystemDirectory.cpp#568)":
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The temporary directory is OS specific and in my case (unix) defined by the
|
||||||
|
environment variables
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
* $TMPDIR
|
||||||
|
* $TMP
|
||||||
|
* $TEMP (tried in that order)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After I set
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
TMP=~/.tmp
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
and restarted conkeror, pressed C-i in a textbox, the file is eventually saved
|
||||||
|
in the temporary directory **.tmp** in my home directory!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[!tag eth net]]
|
||||||
Loading…
Reference in a new issue