PH-userjs-updater

About

This is a POSIX compliant shell script for downloading and updating the Firefox user.js from Privacy-Handbuch.

The script will download the user.js of your choice from Privacy-Handbuch into the selected profile directory. It is recommended to close Firefox and Thunderbird before changing their user.js. Changes will take effect at the next start.

Usage

After downloading updater you need to make the script executable first: chmod +x updater. You can either run it via /path/to/updater or put it in one of your $PATH directories to be able to just call updater (or whatever file name you have chosen).

If this script is not located in your Firefox's user profile directory (which is e. g. ~/.mozilla/firefox/yourprofile.default) you have to specify your profile directory with -p PROFILE or select it via -l.

Just like the ghacks user.js updater, this script will search for a user-overrides.js in your selected profile directory and append it to the downloaded user.js. The options from user-overrides.js will take precedence over those from the user.js.

For automated updating you should at least use the option -y so the updater won't hang waiting for your confirmation. You can also have the updater update itself automatically through the option -s. Alternatively, you can let the updater check for updates with -u. If there is an update available, the latter will ask whether you want to update so you can check out the changes beforehand. You might run -u or -s without specifying a valid profile path to just update the updater.

Example usage

Manual updating:

updater -ulc moderat -o "/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/yourprofile.default/overrides.js"

This will search for updates of this updater (-u), present you a list of Firefox profiles to select one from (-l), install the moderat version of the user.js (-c moderat) and append the given override file to the resulting user.js (-o "…"). The last option is needed because the name of the file is not user-overrides.js.

Automatic updating of Firefox and Thunderbird user.js in one run (e. g. as a cronjob):

/path/to/updater -dsyp "/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/yourprofile.default" -p "/home/user/.thunderbird/yourprofile.default"

This will create a diff file for later comparison of the current and older versions of the user.js (-d), update the updater silently (-s), update the user.js without asking for confirmation (-y) and operate in the given Firefox profile folder (-p "…/firefox/…") as well as in the given Thunderbird profile folder (-p "…/.thunderbird/…"). Since -c is not specified, each user.js file will be updated to the current version of their respective config. The -p option is needed only if the updater resides in a different directory than your profile.

Maintenance

Is this software still maintained?

Yes. There's not much to update, that's why the last commit might date back quite a while. Don't worry though, I will be notified of new issues.

Acknowledgment

This script is based on the ghacks user.js updater.sh. Thanks for all your work!

License

This software is licensed under the MIT License.