Using go-rod with firefox, failing to start new instance of firefox about rod

[chmike]

Bug filed at bugzilla

[chmike]

The following code uses os.StartProcess as go-rod and succeeds in starting an independent instance.

// From https://gist.github.com/lee8oi/ec404fa99ea0f6efd9d1
func Start(args ...string) (p *os.Process, err error) {
	if args[0], err = exec.LookPath(args[0]); err == nil {
		var procAttr os.ProcAttr
		procAttr.Files = []*os.File{os.Stdin,
			os.Stdout, os.Stderr}
		p, err := os.StartProcess(args[0], args, &procAttr)
		if err == nil {
			return p, nil
		}
	}
	return nil, err
}

func startFirefox2() {
	p, err := Start("firefox", "--profile", "/home/.../Data/nz5ijj7z.profile", "--new-instance")
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	p.Wait()
}

Trying to start firefox with go-rod and Leakless(false) fails. I still get the error that firefox is already running. But getting the debug port given in the parameters succeeds.

[ysmood]

https://go-rod.github.io/#/compatibility?id=supported-browsers

#193

[chmike]

I finally identified the cause.

Firefox ignores the argument --profile if its value is attached with =. Surprisingly, it doesn’t ignore the --remote-debugging-port=9333 argument. It does open the port 9333.

This is a limitation of firefox with the --profile parameter. There may be other parameters like that.

The following code does nearly everything like go-rod except that the profile parameter is properly separated. It then works and port 9333 is opened.

func Start(bin string, args ...string) (p *os.Process, err error) {
	cmd := exec.Command(bin, args...)
	cmd.SysProcAttr = &syscall.SysProcAttr{Setpgid: true}
	cmd.Stdout = io.MultiWriter(io.Discard, launcher.NewURLParser())
	cmd.Stderr = io.MultiWriter(io.Discard, launcher.NewURLParser())
	err = cmd.Start()
	if err != nil {
		return
	}
	return cmd.Process, err
}

func startFirefox2() {
	p, err := Start("/usr/bin/firefox", "--new-instance", "--profile", profileDir, "--remote-debugging-port=9333")
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	p.Wait()
}

I don’t know if there can be a quick fix to use go-rod with firefox. As I can’t test the code beyond that I don’t know.

[chmike]

So apparently, firefox is not supported by go-rod because of another problem. Sorry to hear that.

[chmike]

I’m in the process to fix the firefox command line limitation myself so that it will support "--option=param" arguments as needed for go-rod. The code fix is written and going through the review process.