Re:Retrospective and technical details on the recent Firefox...
by account42 on Thursday February 03, 2022 @03:21AM
(#30190021)
The package manager does not stomp over the running instance but only replaces the files. The original files even remain on the disc (but without any name) as long as they are open. It is firefox that is designed to have to re-open those files during runtime - but that is not inherently required. Before Firefox went multi-process it handled package updates just fine and there is no technical reason why it can't still do that.
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Re:Retrospective and technical details on the recent Firefox...
by rockdoe on Thursday February 03, 2022 @04:25AM
(#30190456)
>Before Firefox went multi-process it handled package updates just fine
No, the problem was just less common and things randomly stopped working or crashed instead of getting the warning page.
In theory you can design the browser so it keeps all files open and passes down the handles, but I imagine it's a mess to do that in practice, especially as Firefox is still somewhat configurable.