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.jses. 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 user profile directory (which is e. g. ~/.mozilla/firefox/yourprofile.default) you have to specify your profile directory with -p PROFILE or choose it from a list via -l.

The updater will search for a user-overrides.js in each 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. The option -a also comes in handy for automation. It will update every profile (Firefox & Thunderbird) in the default directory locations where a user.js from the Privacy-Handbuch is already present. Just make sure you got your user.js setup figured out beforehand. You might also let the updater update itself through the option -u.

Example usage

Manual updating:

updater -c moderat -p '/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/yourprofile.default'

This will install the moderat version of the user.js (-c moderat) to the specified profile directory (-p) and append the contents of user-overrides.js to the resulting user.js (default behavior).

Automatic updating of Firefox and Thunderbird user.jses (e. g. for cron.weekly):

/path/to/updater -aduy

This will create a diff file for later comparison of the current and older versions of the user.jses (-d), update the updater (-u) and update all recognized user.jses (-a) without asking for confirmation (-y). Since -c is not specified, each user.js will be updated to the latest version of their respective config. The -p option is most useful for setting all profiles up but not necessary in this "update everything" cronjob.

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 (now known as arkenfox) user.js updater.sh. Thanks for all your work!

License

This software is licensed under the MIT License.