WebPositive dies on startup trying to load welcome page

[grexe]

Since recently - maybe because WebPositive got angry with me and is jealous of the Iceweasel port now;-) - I cannot use WebPositive anymore.

When I start the app, it tries to load the welcome page forever and stays in a completely unresponsive state. Redraw doesn't work, quit only closes the window but leaves the app open as a zombie task, so you have to kill it.

I am connected to a stable highs-peed connection and every other network app works fine. I tried removing all WebPositive settings, even reinstalled the app, but nothing helps.

Using latest nightly as of today, which is hrev58436

[grexe]

webpositive zombie

[grexe]

browsing works again with latest nightly as of hrev58442, and WebPositive quits normally.

However it still appears blocking as it does not find the welcome page it tries to open on startup on a fresh settings dir, and that file is not there. Instead of failing, it stays loading forever.

Also, the default bookmarks that are installed on a Haiku setup are not reinstalled when reinstalling WebPositive. I think these settings belong to the browser and should be handled as part of the webpositive package.

I tried to clean settings again and reinstalled the app, but the welcome page is not in the expected location:

​file:///boot/home/config/settings/WebPositive/LoaderPages/Welcome

The entire LoaderPages directory is missing, In /boot/home/config/settings/WebPositive/, I only have:

Application
Bookmarks
BrowsingHistory
cookie.jar.db
cookie.jar.db-shm
cookie.jar.db-wal
WebpageIcons.db
WebpageIcons.db-shm
WebpageIcons.db-wal

[waddlesplash]

That directory is supposed to come with the default install. If you deleted settings, it may just be gone, and you'll need to copy it again from an install image.

[grexe]

Yes but imho that's an error in packaging, as I pointed out:

the default bookmarks that are installed on a Haiku setup are not reinstalled when reinstalling WebPositive. I think these settings belong to the browser and should be handled as part of the webpositive package.

[pulkomandy]

They don't, they are just plain files that you can edit as you want. If they were in the package, it would be impossible to modify them.

It seems people get too used to the advantages of packages where everything is transactional and revertable, but it's not the case here.

[grexe]

oh I see... I'm still new to the packaging front, but wouldn't it be possible to separate that out into a post-processing script at least? So just to provide sensible defaults that are not strictly package related but should be there if nothing else is already found...

cf:

• ​https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/develop/packages/BuildingPackages.html, section "post-install-scripts".

[pulkomandy]

It would be possible, but then every update of webpositive would reinstall them. Really these files don't need to come from a package, they are just files in the default install, and if you want to remove or change them, you can. Having them package managed in any way would be intrusive. And a "restore bookmarks to default" option would be too risky and destructive if you have your own set of carefully configured bookmarks.

If you want them back, you can copy them from the install media for example.

[nephele]

In my mind, Ideally, A no-settings pressent Haiku should work just fine. I expect these files to be packaged in a sort of defaults place, and if WebPositive is started and it's settiings dir is missing (not empty, but just not there) it would then create this directory with defaults. For this the files can be in a defaults dir, or alternatively be just in WebPositives image itself.

[grexe]

Ok I get it, but the root cause is still that WebPositive assumes the existence of a file that is completely out of its control, and it silently depends on a fresh installation.

If WebPositive defaults to a specific page, it should not assume the bookmark or local page is (still) somewhere in the *users* /home, but contain the page directly (HTML+images) as part of the HPKG, or just jump to the online version, which would be the better option anyway, since this is a *Web* browser and the online version can be updated more easily.

[pulkomandy]

The welcome page is intentionally available as an offlinedocument so you can read it even without internet access. If I remember commectly, it has some javascript to redirect to an online version if possible.

We could move that to a special about:welcome page manageb by webkxt/webpositive, so that if the offline version is deleted, you would get an online one.

But I don't really see a problem here. If you set thehomepage of webpositive to some of tour own html, and delete that, it also stops working. This is not really any different, is it? Maype resetting to default #ettings should make sure that the file exists and if not, set up something else?